An amorphous blue blob exists in the form of a semi-liquid substance. The only thing that keeps it from being just a primordial soup is a single red nucleus the size of a ping pong ball, capable of changing the entire structure of its body to fit the situation; this creature is called a slime. Having the same masses as a pig and the intelligence of microbes only exist to eat and survive with no will of their own. It is a pitiful creature that couldn't reach its full potential as the apex predator of the food chain, that's until now.

This cave has completely trapped Minoru inside its stomach. All he can do is shambling around like a slug, using this new body. Even after all this time, it's still uncomfortable for him to move around like this, mainly because it's inefficient, slow, and gives him a slight tingling feeling in his supposed belly whenever he moves.

Although he wants to bring back his human physiology, he knows full well that it's not possible now, considering it takes a lot of focus to maintain the pair of eyes that he created out of the desire to see. Even then, it's nowhere near as good as the eyes he used to have.

But it doesn't mean he has lost his hope of returning to what he was. The fact that he can grow eyes means he has the potential to do more. He already knows his body is unique from any other lifeforms that he had seen throughout his life, but the only way to know the full extent of his body is to keep testing the limit.

Minoru closes his eyes and empties his mind of all other thoughts. Images are flashing through his mind as he tries to find something that fits all of his criteria. He wants something to make him move faster and more comfortably but needs to be easy to create and maintain.

"This…"

He stops unexpectedly. The thing he thought of, although unusual, is very effective and fitted all of the checkboxes. Knowing that the worst can happen is him starting all over again, he shoots for it without hesitation.

He closes his eyes once again and remembers that sensation. The sensation that he felt when he formed his eyes. The feeling of his body stretching, separating, and reforming back to the shape of a pair of eyes.

"Focus, and remember that feeling," he whispers to himself as he digs deep within his body for it.

Slowly but surely, he begins to feel it surging throughout his body like a workbench on service. He redirects that feeling to the left of his body as he calls upon the image he has prepared and places it on that workbench. As naturally as the water flow, every molecule in his body begins to work. Shifting, stretching his structure, and reforming itself, creating a bone-like system strong enough to support his body, and finally covers it a thick later of transparent slime, mimicking flesh.

What came out from all of that effort is a spider-like appendage the length of about 15cm. Although it's similar to a spider's leg, it has nowhere near the detail and texture of the real thing. It's simply a slimy knock-off that looks similar to one, but that is good enough for Minoru. He continues and creates three more of these appendages, and as a result, they make him look like a half-ass spider.

"Ok, time to test these out."

He tries to stand up as slowly as possible, yet his body is still shaking like a tumbler doll that just got hit, but he still prevails anyway and manages to stand up without falling.

"I got this; I got this. Cmon, let's do it."

He tries to move his left front leg forward and almost falls because of the inability to balance himself correctly. Fortunately, he is able to balances himself just enough so he does not fall. Then next comes the right leg, and then the hinge legs. With each step, he can feel his body slowly adapting and adjusting to these new gears. And in just a short amount of time, he can move around without fumbling too much.

Minoru crawls on the spider-like legs that he created for maneuvering around this new home of his. A damp and dark cave filled with humid air and the ticking sounds from the water droplets on the ceiling as they drop onto the ground filled with light green grass that somehow survives out of sheer stubbornness.

All four sides of the cave are seemingly endless corridors connecting like the body of an Ouroboros. It's like a maze with no way out. Although he had formed a pair of eyes to at least be able to see his surroundings, they're almost useless in this virtually pitch black place where the only light source is the ambient blue light of the crystals inside the cave.

The darkness removes not only the concept of sight but also time from him. He doesn't know how long he has been here, a week? A month? It's hard for him to judge the time when there's no sun, but time doesn't matter to him anyway.

Clack

The sound of a small pebble hitting the ground signifies solid ground to him. He crawls toward that small pebble and flicks it away again as not only a way to compensate for the lack of visibility but also to slightly mitigate his boredom.

The sound of the pebble continues ringing into his ears as he repeats the same dull motion of finding and flicking it away. 'Clack' and 'Clack' are all that he hears; they almost drove him to the point of frustration instead of helping him with his boredom, and yet he still keeps doing it…but he soon gets send back to reality when a loud shriek is suddenly banging into his ears from right ahead of him.

He stops in his tracks and takes a closer look at what is in front of him. A pair of glowing red eyes hovering above the ground as the dim light from crystals in the cave, revealing the rest of the creature slowly. A petite and skinny body the size of a Soda bottle, barely visible from where Minoru is standing. He realizes the thing in front resembles a Rat. But before he completely processes what it is. The beast already quickly dashes away from him but is still keeping its eyes fixed on him at all times and eventually vanished into the air.

Minoru doesn't move an inch even after the creature has left. He stands there and contemplates what had just happened. "Was that a rat?', he asked himself while swinging his eyes around to find traits of it and felt a little bit relieved when he didn't see anything suspicious. He was shocked. This entire time, he thought he was alone in this cave, trapped in here with rock and dirt, but now knowing that there are other "things" existing in the cave along with him makes him slightly disturbed, and haste him to find a way to get out of this cave even more.

He continues walking again after calming himself down a bit. The cave somehow has become terrier; the air now seems even more stuffy and damp while light goes from dim to almost nonexistence. These things don't help because he feels like something is watching him from places he couldn't see, something dark and malicious. Those red eyes from before still linger in his mind, and sometimes he can faintly see them in the corner of his eyes. He knows that something is following him.

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The more he walks, the more he feels that something isn't right while time begins to feel even more distorted than it already is as he walks and walks. He doesn't even keep track of how long he has gone and instead focuses on that unexplainable feeling in his stomach, figuring out how such a small creature has such a significant presence.

Shhh

The sound brings him back to his senses. He shakes his head to get rid of his thoughts and focuses on what he just heard. It sounds like water, flowing not too far from here. He quickly dashes toward where he thinks the sound is, and after a few seconds of running, he can see a small stream the width of around 6 meters in front of him.

He walks toward the stream as carefully as he could, looking around for any sign of foreseeable danger. After confirming that he is alone, he puts down his guard and approaches the stream. He retracts his body into a ball and stretches it toward the creek, and touches the water with his face. The water is clear and cold, and that coldness takes him back to life and clears his mind from other thoughts.

He takes a look at his reflection in the water; even as of now, he still can't believe that he is no longer human. "Why is he here" and "what is this place" are the two questions he has been trying to repress since the moment he came here. He wanted to distract himself from these questions by making the idea of escaping this cave his primary goal. Yet, they still wiggle back into his mind like a worm that won't leave and disturbed him to his core.

He is hoping to get those thoughts off his head. Minoru redirects his attention to the direction of the stream, and although it's pretty dark, he can still see that the stream is flowing to somewhere not far from here. He gets up and dresses back, spawning four spider-like legs to continue his journey. Just right after taking his first step, he has to step back by those red glowing eyes quickly. The rat has returned; this time, instead of hiding in the shadow, it stands right in front of him and entirely reveals itself to Minoru like it's mocking him.

Minoru stops in his tracks; although he doesn't feel threatened by its presence, he still has a sinking feeling in his stomach. The rat still hasn't moved an inch. It just stands there watching Minoru like it's waiting for him to make the first move.

Minoru doesn't waste any moment. He begins to inflate his body like a balloon to make himself seem significant in front of the rat, a tactic he learned while watching a Peacock spreading its tail to scare away a Leopard during one of his operations in South Africa. But to his surprise, the rat didn't even flinch. It still stood there and glued its eyes on him, like processing what he was trying to do.

The creature then immediately let out a massive shriek echoing across the cave, curved its body up, and hisses at him. Knowing the thing won't be backing down, Minoru quickly changes his body back and is ready for a fight, and it's at that moment he realizes that the creature is not alone. Behind it are even more blood-fueled glowing red eyes slowly appearing from within the dark. It looks like the thing brought its pack.

He instantly knows that he has no chances and runs straight away from them as fast as possible. But those things won't let him get away quickly; they run after him in a V shape formation. The fast lead swiftly and headfirst matches up with his speed and runs parallel with him. Then out of nowhere, one of them jumped straight on him from his right, forcing him to dodge to the back not to get hit, but the thing still bit off a chunk from his body, making him almost lose his balance.

They're slowly catching up, both the ones from behind and on his sides. But just as he thought things couldn't get any worse, Minoru realized they are chasing him into an inescapable corner.

Through the barely visible light provided by the crystals in the cave, he can see that he is heading toward an abyss that stretches to seemingly infinity from left to right. The other side is a barely visible platform, with the distance being 18 meters away and 7 meters lower than the ground on which he is standing. Minoru panics; he doesn't know what to do in this situation; if he stops just for a second to think, they will catch up and devour him, but there is no way in hell he will be able to make that jump.

'THINK, GODDAMNIT!"

He forces his brain to work at its maximum capacity to figure out something that can save him in this situation. He searches his memories, the memories of a person who lived through countless wars as there must be something that can help him, something like…' Yes, that is it,' he thinks to himself like he just stroked gold. He knows if he can pull "that" off, he will be able to stay alive. And with no hesitation, Minoru puts all of his strengths into his four wobbly legs and boots off as fast as he possibly can.

With each second passed by, he is closer to the edge of the fissure; even if he stops now, Minoru still wouldn't be able to prevent his momentum from sending him into his doom, precisely what he is intending.

Without an ounce of dithering in his mind, he jumps into the black abyss the moment he touches the edge and spreads his body out as thin as he could mid-air, creating a shape similar to the body of a flying squirrel. The air resistance provided by the formation and the momentum he created gives him enough speed and distances to cross the gap of the fissure and crash land into the other side.

Minoru feels like he has broken all of the bones in his body, even with none. He tries to get up by shaking his entire body to get rid of the dizziness from the concussion from the landing. He quickly swings his attention back toward the rats. They're all standing at the edge of the cliff. Looking down at him with frustration in their eyes and grinding their teeth the rodent they're. Seeing that, Minoru lets out a smirk of full-on provocation in his mind and wishes he still has enough energy to forms a mouth and vocal cord just to yells out:

"I'M HERE, YOU MORONS, COME AND GET ME!"

The rats stare at him for a few seconds, then finally retreat to whatever they came from. Minoru lets out a sigh of relief and flattens himself onto the ground; he is out of stamina and also lost a big chunk of his body mass.

He rests there like a puddle of water, unmoving and unbothered by everything else while reconsidering all of his life choices and wonders how they lead him to this. Nevertheless, it's time for him to move; only God will know what kind of danger awaits him if he stays for too long.

Minoru reforms himself back to a ball of the blob, which is now only two-thirds of what it used to be. He rolls around and tries to absorb as much of those stubborn grass plaguing the ground beneath as he could to heal himself. They all get sucked into his body and get slowly converted into his body mass.

The entire process will take him at least fifteen minutes to fully heal and even slower if he tries moving. Still, he gets up and continues walking anyway not to put himself in a vulnerable situation. He could care less about the slower healing time. But that is also when he realizes a strange sign. This part of the cave has way more of those crystals than everywhere else he had explored.

The light from all of the crystals is bright enough to see quite clearly and not trip himself even with his somewhat weak eyesight. However, he focuses his full attention on a small crack on the wall. It's about the size of a tennis ball; what is strange is that the light that comes from it is even brighter than where he is.

Even though his gut tells him not to go there, somehow, the morbid curiosity within him can put aside all of his rational thinking and self-preservation just to see what is in there, and it won.

He approaches the crack and easily squeezes his body through it because the only hard thing in his body is his core which is way smaller. As he comes out the other side, he sees that behind the crack is a small space enough for at least twenty people to stand in without being crowded.

The entire place is filled with those crystals, making it even brighter than the 4th of July. But the fun of exploration immediately stops the moment he strayed his eyes out of the blinding light. In front of him is a thing whose presence alone is enough to make him feel like he's suffocating.

The thing is larger than even an Elephant. While hardened scales covered its body, with a mixed shade of black even darker than the abyss Minoru just crossed and aqua blue of the sky, a giant pair of wings that rival even the great Quetzalcoatlus and a neck that put a Giraffe to shame. In front of him is no ordinary animal but a creature of myth and legend, a Dragon.

While he is still shivering in fear and shock from its suffocating aura, the Dragon takes notice of his existence and crouches down to "greet" him.

"Welcome to my lair, little one," the Dragon spoke.