I mentally flick the switch that sells my accumulated... cubes, and tear into the ground. I manage to take two whole bites of the ground around the tree (and some roots caught in the crossfire) before i'm full. While a lot more than my couple handfuls earlier, it's still not a lot.

My bite marks look perfectly smooth. Wait, do I have teeth?

My hand goes back up to feel the inside of my mouth, and to my surprise, no, I do not have teeth. Just lips. Very thing, incredibly sharp lips. I was sure I felt teeth earlier, and that my mouth was thicker than this. Either way, if this is going to be my mouth, I don't want it to be a straight line. I want teeth!

My lip shudders for a moment, before changing beneath my very fingers. It's perfectly straight line breaking up into smaller lines. They then tilt, extending as they do so. Within moments i've gained a rather fearsome pair of chompers. I wonder, did that affect the invisible boundary preventing me from eating more? To test it, I grab a bit more dirt from the side of my second bite. It pains me to ruin such a perfectly smooth surface, but my curiosity must be sated!

I place the small bit of dirt roughly in the middle of my mouth, give it a few pats to squish it down, then maneuver my hand beneath it to feel if it's flat or not.

It's not!

Interesting. Very interesting. I shove the dirt all the way to the back of my throat, where it hits the other invisible wall. I feel it again, but it's different. Where the two walls meet it's flat, as it moves away, towards my lip-teeth, the spikier it gets, on a gradual sort of gradient. I'm sure I'll find some use for this information later, but for not it's just kind of neat. I mentally look at my upgrades, and none of them are available.

I sell again, and the dirt that was previously floating falls into the- wait what. Oh, so that's what actually happens to things that go in my mouth. The dirt fell into the invisible wall, disappearing as it did so. So the invisible wall acts as my stomach? Sort of? This whole body is weird. Speaking of, I probably look ridiculous. Arm halfway in my mouth, eyes staring off into the distance, bark skin preventing me from sticking out but still being pretty noticeable.

If anyone saw me I bet they'd either shriek and jump a foot in the air, ignore me, or wonder just how much they drank last night. I snicker at the mental image, but nothing happens. Frowning, I try again. Nothing happens. I try to speak, to make noise, but all I end up doing is flapping my mouth.

Oh shit, I can't talk. That's a problem. How am I gonna convince people I'm friendly if I can't speak?! Can't even talk to myself! No lungs to exhale air, no mouth to shape the vibrations into words! That is going to cause so many issues later down the road. Here and now though, it's just an inconvenience.

Frustrated, I chomp down on the tree next to me. There's a horrible crunching sound, and then I'm half full. I step back, noting the new giant indent in the tree. Sap slowly begins to leak out of the sides of the bark.

Oops?

I step back further and trip in one of my bites, falling flat on my back. It hurts, way more than it should. I try to scream, but nothing happens. I lay there, on the slightly grassy dirt, just trying to deal with the sudden and entirely unexpected pain. Slowly, it began to fade away. Carefully, I sit up, not sure if moving to fast would aggravate the wound. Thankfully, it doesn't, the pain just continues to fade until it's gone.

I maneuver my arms to my back and feel it, checking for some kind of damage. There's nothing. I turn, looking at the ground where I fell. A couple small bits of bark lie on the ground where my back was. I grab one and put it in the palm of my hand. It's practically invisible, so I change just that palm into a dull orange. It's the same as my skin.

Did it break off from me? is this made of my flesh? Am I holding a piece of my own skin?

This... doesn't bode well for my survival. If i'm so fragile that merely falling to the ground breaks off pieces of me, what would an actual attack do? I know that there's actual dragons here, and from these memories people seem to be able to get strong enough to fight things on that level, which means...

I'd probably just shatter into a million pieces if they hit me.

I'm distracted once again by a pulse of Hunger. Oh right, i'm not full. I drop the small shard of bark(me?) and take another bite of dirt. Full again. I mentally glance at the upgrades, noticing that Capacity can be upgraded. I upgrade it.

Capacity: level 3 (600) → level 4 (currently 1000)

Huh. So that's how it works. The amount of size I gain is equal to it's current level times 100. It's exponential, but on the slow side of exponentials. Better than a linear upgrade, that's for sure. I keep eating, then selling,

I bite into the dirt once again, but still don't feel full after one bite. I take a second one, but halfway through through i'm full. I withdraw my face from the ground and almost whistle. Since I stopped halfway, the imprint of my new teeth is visible, and let me tell you, it looks like something much scarier than me took that bite.

I stand up and look around at the lush green trees, mostly dirt floor with a bit of grass, and not much else. Is it just me, or does it look kinda unnatural? I mean, no bushes, barely any grass, no herbs or miscellaneous plants, and perfectly healthy, bright green trees? Something's off. I sniff the tree I took a bite of, only to realize I don't have a nose. Wait, do I even have ears? A quick check confirms that no, I do not have ears.

I examine the bark with my eyes instead, noticing that some of the layers of the tree appear to be black. I touch one, and it crumbles like ash. I turn to the ground and examine it a bit more closely. Yes, it's mostly dirt and roots and other normal things, but a concerning amount of it appears to be ash too. A forest fire? No, this looks too recent and frequent. Forest fires don't happen that often, even here.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

How do I know that? More miscellaneous memories revealing themselves, I guess.

I stand back up, my hand rubbing my chin in thought. What could be causing such frequent forest fires? The answer comes quickly enough.

The dragons!

The dragons must burn the forest every now and then, but why? I walk away from the tree, back to the clearing to try and catch a glance of the dragons again. Instead, I notice that on the other side of the clearing, the shrubbery seems to be doing just fine. In fact, as I watch, a couple squirrels clamber through the branches of a few trees, and a bird flies close overhead. I look back and forth between the seemingly normal forest and the one that looks half dead.

Normal forest it is! I don't wanna get burned to death by dragon fire. Making my way over to the seemingly normal greenery, I keep my ears(?) peeled for any loud or sudden noises, but all I can hear are insects. And Squirrels. And birds. Nothing out of the ordinary. Y'know, my bites would be a lot more noticeable over here, maybe I should go back to the half dead part of the forest... No! Bad me! Do not risk being burned by dragonfire for stealth!

Speaking of stealth, i'm not so sure bark is going to blend in as here as it did in the burned section. I try to shift to become greenish shrubbery colored, and it looks perfect, but as soon as I step into the forest I can tell it's not going to work. There's just too many different colors moving and shifting, and I, being a static image in motion, still stick out.

What if... I could turn the color of air? My bodies already shown it has capabilities outside of my current knowledge and understanding, and this is technically covered by my whole color changing thing, so it should work.

My body shimmers, then disappears from sight. Success! I'm now semi invisible! I'm still probably visible in all kinds of other vision though, like heat vision- wait no, I'm hollow. I don't emit heat. I'm definitely still visible to magic whatever sight. I don't really think i'm visible in many other types of vision, because if I was, so would the rest of the air. So they wouldn't be able to see anything except air, and certainly not me.

A sinister grin works its way onto my face. Invisibility! This is going to solve soooo many problems ahead of time. Can't spot me from the air if i'm invisible! can't shoot me if you can't see me! I think evil laughter thoughts for a moment, then turn my attention back to reality.

The floor here looks mighty tasty. Time for a bit of grinding! Oh hey what's that word me-

------------------------

I startle awake from the floor, brain feeling both 10 times bigger and like it'd just run a marathon. Tapping into that ginormous amount of memories was not intentional, and it kinda hurt. Also took a while, judging by the fact that it's night now. The sounds are different, so I take a moment to adjust to that. Now, to address what just happened.

When I tried to learn what the word "grinding" meant, that opened the floodgates to way more memories than I knew what to do with. Most of them had to do with long hours sat in front of a computer, completing tasks over and over for virtual rewards. Along with all that, came a bunch of knowledge about science. It wasn't perfect, but I now have a general grasp on how the world is supposed to work. (excluding magic and stuff.)

The videogame stuff also came with it's fair share of meta-knowledge, patterns and formulas and ways of thinking about the world that seemed to give one an advantage if any aspect of reality had been gamified. Especially all the stuff from people who liked to find ways to break games using just the stuff they were given in said game. I'm sure that my powers, nascent as they are, will eventually have something to take advantage of.

I should probably sell and eat now. Can't make any progress if I just stay full all the time.

I sell, and begin taking bites out of the ground. Y'know, a human form isn't exactly the most optimal for this. It feels clunky, having to bend down on my hands and knees like this just to take a bite. I get full again, and sell. Checking on the upgrades, capacity is once again available. I buy it again.

Capacity: level 4 (1000) → level 5 (currently 1500)

Sweet. I go back to eating, and quickly eat enough to become full. While i'm doing so I slowly change my body, lengthening my neck and arms while shortening my legs. I elongate my mouth to get more with each bite and move my eyes to the side of my head to better watch for anything coming to investigate what's making the ground vanish. By then end I resemble some sort of weird deer-girafe-wolf hybrid.

Still invisible, of course.

I keep eating, staying in roughly the same area and getting Capacity up to level 7 (2800 capacity). Then, on my way to level 8, I notice something. Speed can be purchased.

Speed: level 1 (10) → level 2 (12)

I don't really notice a difference. Kinda disappointing, but maybe that's because it's night and I can barely see anything. There's no moon, which means its a lot darker than nights are on Earth. It's part of the reason i'm staying in one general area instead of wandering off while I eat. The other part is, I kinda like digging, and eating a massive hole into the ground is far faster than digging using shovels.

Keep eating, eventually getting my Capacity all the way up to level 11 (6600). I upgrade speed one more time on the way, but I still don't notice a difference. I also changed my hands and feet into inverted claws, helps keep my feet from sliding out from under me every time I take a step. I keep eating, slowly going deeper and deeper into the earth. Not that deep, if I stand up on my hind legs I'm still taller, but for like 30 minutes of work, this is insane progress.

I decide to make the hole a little wider, and go around the edge taking bites out of the walls, starting from the top and working my way down. The Hunger has diminished quite a bit, even when I reset back down to zero fullness. Maybe the Hunger had something to do with the upgrades? It would explain why it's going down over time, but what does that mean? Is there something deeper i'm missing?

Thinking about the Hunger isn't gonna make it go away, back to eating!

I lean down to take another chunk out of the earth when I realize something. The stars. There's less of them. It's a very slight difference, like 1 in every 20 gone, but it's noticeable. I quickly bring up memories of the night sky and yup, less stars. Different stars, don't get me wrong, I'm not on Earth and these have totally different constellations, but there is a difference in the amount. More new information to add to the pile I guess.

I turn my attention back down to solid ground and resume eating, widening the hold and reaching level 12 (7800) in Capacity. 78 times more room than when I first started, and it shows. It takes me more than two seconds to max, even with my larger mouth taking bigger bites out of the ground. And, it seems to be taking more cubes to upgrade than before. I'm not really complaining though, just observing a pattern.

A few minutes later, and i've reached level 3 in Speed. Still not sure what it does, but it's an upgrade, and I don't say no to upgrades. Nothing has interrupted me so far, so this is looking to be a great first night here in the wilds! And reality!

Of course, having thought such a thing, several howls suddenly echoed through the forest, shaking the trees with how loud they were.

I just jinxed myself, didn't I.