Hunger.

For the first moments of my existence, all I knew was Hunger.

Then, I knew pain. My mind exploded into being, warped and conflicting. I began to use limbs I hadn't known existed to thrash madly, in some vain attempt to express the insanity suddenly thrust upon me. It only took a few minutes to gain enough coherence to put something in my mouth, but those first few minutes were the worst.

I shoveled things into my mouth, anything to get rid of the Hunger. Slowly, oh so slowly, the hunger began to fade away. And suddenly, I could eat no more. Not a single speck. I froze. The Hunger was gone. All that was left was...

Me? Who an I? What am I? What is this? What am I seeing? How am I thinking? How do I know what thinking is? What...

I tried to make sense of my mind. It held memories from many different points of view, not all sharing viewpoints, some having conflicting values and priorities. I decided that whosevers memories they were, they were useful, as they gave me context for reality, structure, language, and so much more. I spent a bit more time going through them, integrating them full into myself.

Finally finished with my minds immediate concerns, I turned my attention to my body. Finally able to actually process and understand what I was seeing/hearing/feeling. I was face first in a small hole in the ground. Very small. Slowly, I leveraged my arms and legs to stand up.

I was in a small clearing, with several shallow gouges dug in the ground, dirt flung every which way. I hold my arms up for inspection. Rainbow.

Waitaminute, arms aren't supposed to be rainbow.

As if listening to my thoughts, my arms disappear from perception for a moment, before returning, now a pale white. My eyes widen slightly. I can change color? I look down at the rest of me. Also rainbow. It fixes itself in a few moments, becoming the same pale white as my arms. I examine myself again, the colors of my skin no longer a distraction.

I'm... nondescript is the best term to describe me. I have two arms, two legs, a torso, and presumably a head. Will check when I find a reflective surface. All of my limbs are the color I imagined, the color of the clouds. That exact color, everywhere. They look like someone imprinted that color into reality in the shape of an arm. I turn my arm, almost unable to notice that it's even moving.

I resemble a hole in reality, color given shape. It's unnatural. So I mix a few other colors in, my skin quickly resembling a kids fingerpainting. But it works. My limbs have definition now, and one would no longer mistake me for a 2D object. I move my left arm (I know directions exist!) to the right, slowly approaching my right arm.

Smooth.

I'm smooth. I have no wrinkles or imperfections on the surface that makes up my body. I slide my hand across my arm, noticing that I feel no resistance at all. I touch my leg, and it feels the same. I examine my torso, comparing it to the memories of others bodies. I lack anything between my legs, and my chest is blank. I don't have nipples, abs, a belly button, nor any visible distortions that would come from having muscles and bones.

Am I made of a jelly of some kind? I give my torso a light smack to if it will ripple, and it doesn't. I guess I'm not human then, something else. In hindsight, that should've been obvious with the whole color change thing, but the identity of being human kinda came with the memory package, and that whole thing's still being sorted out.

I move on to my neck and shoulders, both just as smooth and unassuming as the rest of me. I note that they are also a mishmash of colors, despite me not specifically changing their color. I guess thinking about changing the color(s) of my whole body works just as well as being specific. I touch my jaw, finding the first not-smooth part of my body. My jaw.

It's not really sharp, just not smooth. There is a noticeably abrupt turn upwards, instead of a smooth curve like everywhere else on my body.

I open my mouth and put my fingers in the empty space. Surprisingly, I can fit my whole hand in my mouth without even touching my lips. I reach back into my head, wondering where my throat is. Then my forearm hits my lower jaw, and can't reach any further.

I wave my arm around in the seeming emptiness that is is my mouth, even straightening it out to where my head should be. I encounter resistance when trying to bend it past where my skin would be, but only in the direction my mouth faces.

Extremely confused, I feel the back of head with my other arm. It fells like a normal head. I pull my arm out of the weirdness that is my insides and feel the other side of my head, confirming that yes, my head has normal dimensions it should have.

So what on earth is going on with my mouth???

I'm about to reach back in when a massive roar snatches my attention away.

"ROOOOOOOAR"

I turn to the sound, remembering that I know almost nothing about my current surroundings other than green plants, and am met with the distant sight of a Dragon soaring through the clouds, heading straight for... another dragon, moving much faster than it in the opposite direction. They both seem to be heading away from me, so that's good. I'm not in imminent danger of being dragon chow.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

However if there's dragons here...

My mind floods with all kinds of fantasy information, all kinds of information on the races, languages, and customs of those who lived here. Unlike a bunch of the other stuff in my head, most of this information seems immediately relevant to the world I'm in. I'm clearly not on Earth after all.

I now know where I am, sorta. I'm in the wilds, a massive, almost entirely unexplored continent composed entirely of trees and things that want to kill you. The continent takes up roughly 40% of the planets surface, and the further away from the coast you get, the deadlier. There are all kinds of sentient races who compete and collaborate for the mystical and magical resources hidden within, including but not limited to: Demons, Humans, Dragons, Kobolds, Elves, Orcs, Angels, and Plant people.

I blink, back in the present. The dragons are slightly further away now. I look up, my neck letting me look straight up into the air without discomfort. A yellow sun floats in the sky, and no extra moons are visible. In fact, consulting my memories, this planet doesn't have a moon. That's a term that only exists from Earth.

I decide that if dragons are here, there are probably other airborne predators, and I should get to cover. I move over to the closest tree, hiding behind it. My multicolor skin sticks out like a splotch of paint on a white shirt, so I take a moment to copy the color of the tree. I reach up to retry figuring out my mouth, when i notice something else. My skin feels... different. I touch my face, and to my surprise, I've adopted the texture of the tree along with it's color!

I have built in camouflage! Sweet.

Returning to the issue of my mouth... how wide is it? I open my mouth as wide as I can, but my the end my eyes are almost facing the tree. I reach back with my arms and- yep, my mouth really is opening that wide. I feel along the edge of my lip, and compare it to what I feel connecting my lower jaw and upper jaw. A bit of estimation later, and I've determined that my mouth is FAR wider than a human's.

If my head was viewed from the side, I'm pretty sure the line representing my lip would be about 80% of it's length. In the process of feeling around my face, I also figured out that I don't have a nose. Following that train of thought, I haven't been breathing this whole time. I panic for a moment, desperately trying to draw in air, only to find I can't. I don't have lungs, do I?

To confirm, I plunge my arm into my mouth and feel around where my lungs would be if I had any. Nope, no lungs. Nothing else in there either. I mean, if I feel around the boundary of my jaw, I can feel my skin, and I feel my hand inside me, which is weird.

Wait, I'm empty inside. I'm hollow. I feel like that should cause some existential issues, but I don't really mind. Wait, if I'm empty inside, how did I eat earlier???

Finally reminded of the Hunger, I extract my hand from my mouth. I lean down and pick up a bit of dirt and grass and try to put it in my mouth. I drop the small scoop into my open hatch of a mouth and wait. Nothing happens. Confused, I reach in again.

I feel the dirt, its just kind of sitting on nothing. I try to push it in, but it's like there's a steel wall in the way. I move my hand below the dirt, and try to pull it deeper into my mouth, but it encounters that invisible wall again.

What is going on? I know I'm full, but maybe there's some way of making room-

The second I think about making room, my fullness disappears, like I'd never eaten anything in the first place. The Hunger returns.

The next few seconds are a blur as my hands move faster than they'd ever moved before, all for the purpose of getting as much as possible into my mouth. I'm full almost immediately, and have to stop myself from trying to squeeze more dirt into the invisible wall within my mouth.

There's an energy now, existing in the back of my mind. I ignore it for just a moment, deciding that I should probably blend into the tree better before diving into what just happened. Don't want to be attacked by some wild beast way stronger than me while I'm figuring out magic stuff. I press myself into the tree, my body flattening out against it's bark. Within a few moments, at a glance, you'd easily mistake me for just part of a weirdly shaped tree.

Woah. My body is way more malleable than I expected. I thought it was just the color and texture changing thing.

Confident that I was relatively safe (for the moment), I finally addressed the energy sitting inside me... somewhere. It wasn't moving, and it felt kind of like a stack of cubes. I mentally grabbed one of the cubes. Nothing happened. So I picked up another one. Still nothing. So I tried eating one. As soon as it touched my mental mouth, I knew what these weird conceptual cubes of energy were for.

Upgrades

I looked at the four upgrades which had always been there, unnoticed.

Capacity, Speed, Growth, Multiplier.

The only one I could afford was Capacity, and I had to resist the urge to purchase it immediately. This was gamified magic bullshit, and rule one of gamified magic bullshit was: Don't touch shit until you have examined everything and gotten as much information as possible. A very important rule. So, following the rule, I mentally felt the upgrades to try and get a sense of what they actually upgraded.

Capacity: Upgrades how much I can eat. (currently 100)

Speed: Upgrades my speed. (currently 10)

Growth: Upgrades how much I grow for every bite. (currently 1)

Multiplier: Increases the multiplier for my other three upgrades. (currently 1)

Doesn't seem like any of these are harmful, and I can only afford capacity anyway.

Time to press the big red button and see what happens! I upgrade my Capacity.

The Hunger returns.

I lunge off the tree, biting into the ground like it ate my grandma. I'm full after only a single, perfectly round bite in the ground. I stare around at the forest. A squirrel stands frozen some two feet away, an acorn in it's frozen grip. Slowly, while maintaining eye contact, I rise up off the ground and become part of the tree again. The squirrel doesn't move a muscle.

Soooo... capacity gives me more room in my stomach before i'm full. Makes sense. I check back in on the upgrades, and to my surprise, Capacity is still purchasable!

Capacity: Level 2 (currently 300)

After upgrading it again, the Hunger comes back, but far weaker. I'm actually able to resist lunging off of the tree onto the ground. As I stand against the tree, fighting the urge to consume, I notice something. Wind. On my lips. And nowhere else. Curious, I carefully lift my arm in front of my mouth. I can feel a current of air flowing toward my face, but why...

Oh! I'm eating the air! Thats whats happening! Now that i'm paying closer attention, i'm feeling less hungry by the second! Interesting.

It takes longer to become full this way, and it takes great restraint to not just shove a bit of dirt into my face, but eventually i'm full again. I mentally make a switch for "selling" my current fullness so that I don't accidentally do it like I did the first time, and hit it. The Hunger returns full force, but i'm ready.

To eat dirt.

Again.