{Gloria, I really don’t think we should do this.}

[I don’t care what you think, you already agreed to this!]

{But.. But… Shouldn’t we wait to heal a little more?}

[We’re fine! It’s probably more dangerous to stay here because of the wolves.]

{We don’t know what could be in that hole! What if there’s monsters worse than wolves in there?!}

[Nahhh, no way.]

Argh! Is there any way for me to convince her?

I could forcefully take control of the body, which I can do much easier now thanks to leveling up soul manipulation, but that goes both ways. Gloria also gets the benefits of level seven soul manipulation, and so she’d be able to just steal control right back from me.

Plus, that’d make her super angry.

Is there really nothing I can do about this?

But I can’t just allow this…

{Gloria, please reconsider!}

[I refuse!]

I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die!

{Gloriaaaa!}

[Shut up, Fir! Were you five years old before we reincarnated? Because you’re whining like a kid right now!]

{I was an adult, I’ll have you know!}

[That’s surprising!]

{Besides, you’re the one acting like a kid.}

[Hmph, I’m just gonna start ignoring you!]

{Gloria! Gloriaaaa!}

Ah, it's over. My life as a monster in another world is over, so soon after it began.

The crack in the ground is right in front of us, and Gloria keeps going towards it.

I can't do anything.

Being completely helpless is the worst feeling in the world.

Oh, she's about to drop into the hole.

And I cannot do anything to stop her.

Yep, this is it. It's all over now.

We have everything we could ever want up here.

Food, light, shelter.

I don't even know why Gloria wants to leave!

Goodbye, cave home.

Goodbye, moss farm.

Goodbye, Stadiea.

Hello dark abyss that Gloria has just thrown us into!

Oof!

My second time falling down a big, dark pit in my second life.

This time was even worse than the first, because there was no soft bed of moss this time.

We missed it by a few feet.

Ugh, at least that stuff seems to be medicinal, so we can use it to heal our wounds.

[That was fun!]

I’m not even gonna bother responding to that.

{Hurry up and eat that moss please.}

[Fine.]

Hmph.

A lot of the fear has subsided at this point, so now the strongest emotion I’m feeling is annoyance.

Seriously, we just got badly injured in an earthquake(?) and Gloria decided the best thing to do is jump down a big pit into an unknown area?

This has gone beyond being merely reckless, I’m starting to wonder if Gloria even has a functioning sense of self preservation.

Ugh, I need something to think about.

Let’s try insight again, we’ve leveled a few skills since I last checked it.

H

M

E >

>

Oh? That’s interesting.

The H and E, which were previously bright green and bright yellow respectively are now much dimmer.

Is that how they work?

I had already assumed the letters were probably something like health, mana, and energy, but I did wonder how we were meant to gain any information from colorful letters.

Wait, doesn’t this mean we’re in pretty bad shape right now?

The H is really dim, isn’t that super bad?

Hurry up and chow down on that moss Gloria, we need it!

The E is also pretty dim, but I don’t think that’s as bad. Probably.

Okay, while Gloria keeps eating the moss, I need to figure out what to do next.

Climbing back up is impossible. The drop is way too steep and tall.

We might be able to dig a tunnel back up, but not right here. The area we’re in is entirely stone.

We can’t dig in stone. Yet.

If we level our digging skill up enough, I’m sure we’d be able to dig through stone.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

But to level our digging skill, we’d need to dig, and to dig, we need dirt.

So therefore, we must explore.

We will go bravely where no cavern pest has gone before!

Actually, wait a minute.

Where are all the other cavern pests?

When I found myself in this body, it was just kind of standing idly in a random part of the cave.

No other members of my species anywhere to be seen, and we haven’t seen any since either.

Hmm…

There’s gotta be some kind of colony somewhere.

Maybe we’ll find them eventually.

Though, honestly, I wouldn’t be upset if we didn’t.

[All done!~]

Looks like Gloria finished eating.

H

M

E >

I’d prefer to get our health up a little bit more, but we can’t stay here forever.

{Alright, let’s go.}

Rocks, rocks, complete and utter darkness, more rocks.

There’s not much to look at down here.

Just dark gray rocks as far as the eye can see.

Which isn’t very far at all, considering the darkness.

Our species’ naturally poor eyesight certainly doesn’t help either.

We really need to get some kind of eyesight enhancing skill. I’ve been telling Gloria to make sure she’s straining her eyes as much as possible to try to get one, but I don’t know if she’s really listening to me anymore.

It seems like she’s still mad.

Hopefully she’ll get over it soon.

Anyway, this cave sure is boring.

It’s basically the same as the cave we came from before falling into the underground forest.

Glowing moss, rocks, the occasional dirt patch.

And no light whatsoever.

I know I keep repeating myself, but it really is dark!

{Hey, Gloria, can I take over for a little while?}

[Sure, I guess. Don’t know why you’d want to though.]

Now, time to grind for some night vision.

How should I do this?

Hrmm…

What if I focus on the pitch black areas really really hard, to try to get my eyes adjusted to the darkness?

Let’s try!

…

No matter how long I stare, the darkness stays dark.

I guess it’s kinda hard for your eyes to get adjusted to a low light level if that light level happens to be zero.

C’mon eyes, work! You got this!

Grahh! This is so frustrating!

Why didn’t we start off with night vision skill?

Shouldn’t every monster that exclusively lives in caves have a night vision skill?

This is just too cruel!

Well, let’s look on the bright side.

We haven’t seen any monsters down here yet, so at the very least our lives aren’t at risk.

Yet.

I don’t doubt there are monsters somewhere down here. I just have to pray we don’t run into any.

Anyway, I’m getting kind of tired.

I wonder if that’s reflected in the E letter in our status?

Insight, activate!

H

M

E >

Oooh, so it is. So E seems to function as both our stamina and a tiredness meter.

Interesting, interesting.

That’s a little annoying, since it’ll be hard to tell if we just need to sit down for a minute or if we actually need to sleep at a glance.

Better than nothing, I guess.

With that small experiment out of the way, it’s bedtime!

But I probably shouldn’t just lay down and sleep in the middle of the cave.

I’ve been seeing patches of dirt throughout the cave as I’ve been walking, I’ll find one of them, dig a small hole, and sleep in there.

Being able to dig well sure is handy in this kind of place!

Yaaawn.

Good morning!

{Good morning, Gloria!}

[Mornin’ Fir.]

We have another long day of walking ahead of us, better get started right away!

Grumble.

Ah, but first, we need some breakfast.

[Do you wanna take over again today?]

{Sure.}

[Alright. I’ll try to figure out how to practice soul manipulation while you do whatever.]

{Thanks!}

[Mhm.]

Now, what's for breakfast?

Moss, of course!

There's nothing else down here…

Ugh, I want to get out of this stupid cave and eat some good food.

But alas, moss is all I’ll find in my stomach for the foreseeable future.

At least it's not poisonous.

Ahhh, I'm full.

Now, time to get the day started.

What's on the schedule for today?

Walking, walking, and of course,

more walking.

All while straining my eyes to try to get a night vision skill.

Wahh, this is gonna take forever!

Or not!

Well, it still took like half a day, but that's not nearly as long as I expected!

Woohoo, good job me!

With this, we’ll be able to see everything down here!

Is what I would like to say, but there's no noticeable difference.

Well, maybe everything looks a little less blurry, but besides that there's absolutely no change.

Damn it!

I guess that's two more skills we need to grind.

This sucks!

I give up for today, I'm just gonna eat then go to bed.

This patch of moss looks good.

Time to dig in!

Ooh, we leveled up!

I still don't really understand why we can level up from just eating, but I won't complain about it.

If level five is still the evolution threshold, we’re just one level away now.

They weren't great last time, so I'm not going to get my hopes up.

Actually, for all I know the option we didn't choose could have been super amazing.

Well, whatever, hindsight’s twenty twenty.

Next time, Gloria won't just choose one of the options without discussing it with me at all, so it's sure to turn out better.

Although, I've been worrying about if it's really possible for us to reach a human-like form.

In everything I've read where the main character managed to achieve their goal of becoming human again, they started as something that actually made sense to turn into a humanoid.

We started off as a mole thing.

I can't think of any path for us to turn into a human that makes sense.

Obviously, what I think doesn't matter. Just because I can't think of a way, doesn't mean there isn't one.

And besides, no matter what I do now, nothing will change.

All I can really do is hope there's a way.

It's kind of depressing how often I've thought that since waking up in this world.

A noise.

I've been walking in silence for a while now, but I started hearing a weird clicking sound a little while back.

I thought I was going crazy, but it's getting louder now.

{Gloria.}

[Hm?]

{Do you hear that?}

[Yeah. Any idea what it is?]

{No. What do you think I should do?}

[Keep going. Let's find out what it is.]

{Maybe we should set up a hole somewhere close so we have somewhere to run to if whatever’s making that noise is dangerous first.}

[Sounds good to me. I'll dig the hole.]

{Got it.}

I give up control, and Gloria immediately sets off to find some dirt and start digging.

[That should be good enough. Let's go find the bastard making that noise!]

{Remember, run away immediately if it seems at all dangerous.}

[Pff, you're such a scaredy cat. I got this!]

{If you say so…}

We creep down the cave slowly, the clicking noise growing louder as we approach.

Our eyesight has gotten better, for sure, but the cave is still nearly completely dark, so we won't know what the source of the noise is until we're right next to it.

I wonder if insight works in the dark? If it does, I should be able to figure out what it is before we can actually see it.

Yeah, let's try that! Insight, activate!

Nothing yet… nothing yet…

Huh?

‘corpse’?

The clicking noise speeds up, and something lunges at us from the darkness.

{Gloria, dodge!}

Out of the darkness, a pale white humanoid body rushes towards us, barely missing as Gloria steps to the side.

[A moving skeleton?!]

Standing in front of us is the tattered skeleton of what might have once been a human.