Whatever made that roar must be huge, not something I have even the slightest chance of fighting. Or running from, really. I'm slow. I redouble my pace, eating through dirt as fast as I could. If I could get deep enough, maybe whatever made that roar won't notice me!
Several roars answer the howls, from the opposite side. Uh oh. That's the side the Dragons were on.
Am I about to get caught between some Wolf vs Dragon drama?! That might explain the deadish zone I initially came from, it must be a spot they've fought before!
If I wasn't digging at max speed, I certainly am now. I've reshaped my mouth into a flat scoop that I just drag across the ground, allowing me to just run around and dig that way. I hit my max capacity, sell, then keep eating. I hit capacity level 13 (9100), which grants me a bit more scooping time.
I begin to hear footsteps. Hundreds of massive, thudding footfalls from the side of the wolves. Those are some massive wolfs if i'm able to hear that from this far away. I max again, sell, and upgrade speed to level 4 (18). Probably didn't make much of a difference, but if it helps me dig this hole faster, I don't care. Speaking of which, i'm already pretty deep. My eyes are practically useless at this point.
Maybe i'm deep enough? It's already gonna be a pain in the ass climbing back up in the morning.
The top of my tunnel is suddenly lit up by the bright blue of dragonfire, and I watch as a wolf leaps over where my hole is. It´s legs look bigger than trees and it´s body is bigger than most buildings, but my momentary glimpse is cut short by more dragonfire flashing through it's torso, killing it instantly and sending it hurtling away.
Meanwhile, I feel like i'm melting. I definitely underestimated dragonfire, because that brief, less than a second long exposure to it from just 20 feet away (I dug pretty deep didn't I?), was enough to nearly kill me. The trees on the surface were on fire, and dirt was scalding, but none of that meant much to me when I was little more than a painful puddle trying not to die.
I heard more bursts of fire, clashes between claws the size of greatswords and scales bigger than most shields, growls and howls and cries of pain and anger. Thankfully, I was not immediately dosed with even more dragon fire. That would have killed me. It took a bit of time, but my body slowly pulled itself back together into it's humanoid form. Not the dog-giraffe thing i'd shifted myself into, just me.
Well, this clearly wasn't working. Digging a hole as big as this is inefficient and time consuming, and I need to be out of here before another accidental attack actually kills me. What's really good at digging...
Worms! I can be a worm!
Turning down towards the earth, I open my mouth as wide as it can go, then widen my head until my mouth becomes a perfect circle. I shove my mouth into the wall, and it slides in like there wasn't anything there in the first place. I morph my body into a circular tube with a bunch of tiny limbs to help direct me through the soil, and set off. I quickly max again, sell, and purchase another Capacity upgrade.
Capacity: level 14 (10500)
Speed: level 4 (18)
Growth: level 1 (1)
Multiplier: level 1 (1)
I carve through the earth, moving deeper and deeper. One of those things might have earth magic or something, and I saw other colors of breath reflecting off the walls while I was recovering from being a puddle. This world has magic. That I have basically no information on. The deeper I get, the further away from them I get, and the less likely I am to get caught in something not intended for me.
As I'm close to my maximum capacity, something weird happens. I grow. Suddenly, I'm a bit wider and longer. I stop eating as soon as it happens, partly from surprise, partly from the fact that this tunnel no longer fits me, and my sides squishing into the wall prevent me from moving any further. I'm almost full, but not quite.
I'm sorry, since when did I grow when I ate?! Until now, the only sign that i'd even eaten anything was the fact that material was missing and the difference in fullness! What changed?
It only takes a moment of introspection to find the change. Level 14 of Capacity. When I entered quintuple digits. That must be it. And it didn't happen when I was full, it happened just before. Probably around when I hit 10000... energy. Cubes? Yeah, cubes. If it's related to hitting 10000 points, surely it'll happen again. I shunt my extra mass into making my tail slightly longer, and continue on my way.
I hit my maximum capacity and sell, shrinking when I do so. Good, I was hoping it wasn't a permanent change. It can be good to be small sometimes. I reach out with my wormy tendrils and push myself forward. I'm not heading directly down or straight up, i'm doing more of a slight incline downwards, in what I think is away from whatever giant battle I got caught in. Who knows, my sense of direction is terrible.
Or is it? I mentally recall every twist and turn I made on my journey down here beneath the dirt, and try to make some kind of mental map that'll inform me of what direction i'm actually heading in. I fail. Miserably.
This part goes here, this part goes there, wait how long did I turn here? Was this angle 45 degrees of like 60? None of these measurements are precise! GAH!
I keep eating while I wrestle with concepts of distance and angles and precise things that I really have no reference for other than fragments of others minds. It'd probably feel like stealing, but I don't even know if these are from real people. They could just be random information that holds no real weight in reality.
Doesn't really seem that way, but i've only been alive for like a day, and if they were random, shouldn't something in here come from something that isn't a human?
It felt a bit too intentional for it to be completely random, but it was also so disjointed and fragmented that it seemed like no real thought was put into it either. Whatever the answer is, it doesn't help me. I'll still need to deal with the mess that is my mind.
Eventually.
But for now, I'll just keep on chugging, upgrading capacity and speed one more time each.
Capacity: level 14 (10500) → level 15 (12000)
Speed: level 4 (18) → level 5 (20)
Well, speed is now twice what it was in the beginning. Following that line of logic, I should be twice as fast.
I don't feel twice as fast, but I also haven't been able to see anything to compare myself to since I started upgrading speed. I was mostly just digging my hole in pitch darkness, then the dragons and wolves came, and then for the last like 20 minutes I´ve been underground. Not much to do down here other than eat.
I continue in silence for a while longer. Not that I had any choice in my silence. It's peaceful. I find I quite like it. From the moment of my... birth, it's just been question after question and bite after bite. This is my first time ever zoning out, and it is wonderful. I almost wish nothing would interrupt it.
Unfortunately, I still have a limit to how much I can eat, and when I hit it my implement of digging suddenly stops working, abruptly halting me. It doesn't shatter me, like I feared such an impact would, but it doesn't feel good either. Like hitting your head on the ceiling when you go to change a lightbulb.
I sell, check my Upgrades and find that I finally have enough cubes to upgrade Growth. It's absolutely related to how I grow whenever I hit 10k points, but more size isn't gonna hurt me. The cubes flow into it, and something changes within me. When I buy Capacity, it feels like whatever I have for a stomach grows. When I upgrade Speed, something I can't quite put my finger on yet changes. Just now, when I upgraded Growth, It felt like whatever my human equivalent was for bones suddenly became twice as strong.
It was very visceral, and momentarily overwhelmed my poor, inexperienced mind. I stood (did not! Still a noodle) very still for a minute, just processing the sensation. Then, slowly, I started moving forward again. I wanted to know what changed.
I carefully watched my fullness as I plodded forward, waiting for the inevitable growth at about 5/6ths fullness (10k). Instead, it came when I was less than halfway full, at around 5k points. I keep eating, hoping that i'll grow again. when I hit the 10k mark, just as I hoped, I grow even more. and I become an even bigger worm.
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It's worm time baby!
------------------------
A very large amount of worming later, i'd managed to upgrade Capacity 10 times, Speed 6 times, and Growth another two times, which made my stats look like this
Capacity: level 15 (12000) → level 25 (32500)
Speed: level 5 (20) → level 11 (32)
Growth: level 2 (2) → level 4 (4)
Multiplier: Level 1 (1)
I felt like that was enough worming for a day. Actually, I don't know how long I've been down here. It didn't feel like too long, but I haven't tested how accurate my sense of time is yet, so who knows how much time actually passed. It was time for me to return to the surface.
Man, that sounded so epic yet also cringe. Glad there's nobody here that can read my thoughts.
I turned my little wormy mouth away from where I felt gravity trying to pull me, and began the long climb up. I had to use a lot more little stabby limbs to climb upwards than to essentially slide downwards. During my worm time, i'd shifted my skin from air color to bright white, and made it the same smoothness of when I initially popped up here. This change allowed me to, in essence, slide through the ground.
Now, when I was going up, I needed friction back. So I changed the texture of my stabby limbs (and ONLY my stabby limbs) to that of bark. It helped a lot. I don't think i'd ever really thought about where my eyes were on my body, since even if I did move them to somewhere they'd see, it's pitch dark down here. They're on the sides of my mouth, pointing opposite directions, but soon they'll be back on my actual head.
I hit my max again, so, almost on autopilot, I sold. Then, I started to fall. Tendrils shot out of my flesh, digging into walls and anchoring me in place.
Holy shit. If I had a heart, it'd be racing. I nearly fell all the way back down.
I hauled myself up using more tendrils, making sure I had at least six firmly planted in the wall at any given time. When I reached the top, I felt around for the center, then dug right back in. This time, as I was going up, I occasionally moved to the side, so that, should I fall and fail to catch myself, It wouldn't be a straight shot to the bottom like the first time.
Maybe I should keep physics in mind while i'm digging. To be honest, I kinda forgot about them while I was digging. It was just that calming and freeing down here in the earth.
...
Man, I've been digging up for a while now. Just how deep did I go? Did I hit bedrock? Maybe, I probably wouldn't have even noticed with how i'm tunneli-
I burst out of the surface, the sudden light catching me off guard. It's daytime, and the forest, what I can see of it, is ruined. Smoke clouds the sky, ashes mingle in the air, and there isn't a hint of green or wildlife in sight. All that's there are blackened husks of trees and mountains, reaching far up into the sky. There's still some green on the mountains, but I don't get much time to appreciate that as my flight through the sky abruptly ends.
I closed my mouth while I was flying, thankfully. Otherwise I would've gone right back under. Also, ow. That hurt. I shift out of my worm state and back into my default humanoid one. I stand up, having made the mistake of shifting without specifying a direction, and pause.
Is it just me or am I bigger now?
I'm at about half capacity but everything looks smaller. Like I grew a couple inches while I was a worm. I see, so my size changing isn't exclusive to the form I change in. It just makes me bigger, end of story.
Looking down at my body, I notice that my proportions hadn't changed at all with the increase in size. Another thing to note. Now, what to do? I'd grown bored of worming, so I came up here, but there doesn't seem to be much to do up here other than eat dead trees and dirt. watch the smoke maybe?
Or maybe, I could go check the mountains! They've still got some green on them!
A good idea. I start to walk towards the nearest one, but not two steps in I realize that this is yet another thing the human form is unsuited for. In a purely mechanical sense of course, I know all about human endurance.
I morph my body into a spiderlike form, with eight legs, two omnidirectional joints each, with traction claws on the ends, two eyes, and a body connecting all the legs. Maybe when I get bigger, I could made an abdomen. Or more legs. More legs sounds better. Can never have to many legs.
I speed off, much faster with more, grippier limbs. I zoom around trees, over boulders, and under logs. Along the way I eat a little by extending a small proboscis into the ground, scraping off bits of material as I run. I grow a couple more times with my eating, and reach my max halfway to the mountain. Instead of selling, I just allocate most of my mass to making my long, spindly limbs even longer and spindlier.
If there were more, smaller obstacles like bushes or grass or just more trees, making my legs longer would have slowed me down. But since everything was burnt and smaller than it used to be, even the trees, I was able to shoot through the gaps like jumping spider on steroids.
Steroids?
I'm nearly caught off guard by the burst of memories, as it hadn't happened in a while. It's a bunch of stuff about anatomy, the deeper intricacies of human and animal physiology, a bit of chemistry, and workout things. Most of it is completely irrelevant to me, as I do not possess muscles that would need growing, nor do I possess a brain that would emit chemicals.
I only stumble a little, instead of passing out or being stunned into inaction like the last couple times this happened. At the speeds I´m moving, freezing up would be very bad.
I'm almost at the base of the mountain! It looks a lot bigger from down here. like, nearly pierces the clouds big. Wooooooow.
I stare up at the mountain as I run, belatedly realizing that it's the biggest mountain I can see. None of the others in my vision reach quite as high as this one. Means that the climb is going to take a while, but the view when I reach the top will be unmatched.
The ground starts to slope upwards, but I keep my pace high. The forest is still very much dead around me, but I know that there´s greenery higher up. I wanna see some animals! All i've ever seen is a couple squirrels and two birds.
I wanna see a bear! And a lion! And an elephant! And a deer! Ooooh, I wonder if they have ants up there! Will there be berries? Can I eat berries? Who am I kidding, of course I can eat berries. It doesn't matter if they're poisonous, I don't have innards to poison! Just a massive empty void.
I keep running, getting higher and higher up until I start to hear noises. The noises of insects and small animals, in fact. I would speed up, but i'm already going as fast as I can. The noises do sound odd though. They seem off, not quite right.
The trees abruptly switch from dead to alive, and I screech to a halt. The transition from dead looking to perfectly fine trees wasn't gradual at all. I walked back, and found the border. It was like someone had drawn a line and said ¨no fire shall pass this line.¨ and no fire dared to disobey them. For all I know, that was exactly what happened.
I shrink, selling my size. If I had to guess the rough size difference shrinking made, right now i'm the size of a medium dog. Before, I was a pure white spider bigger than most large dogs. Either one would probably give an arachnophobe a heart attack.
Heh heh heh, sneaky sneaky! No one will ever find me! Hold on, I forgot something.
I quickly shift my color from bright white to air, and I vanish from sight. Oops. I would have been painfully obvious to any passing dragon, very glad I remembered to switch back into stealth mode before any such thing happened.
I start heading up the mountain again, moving much slower, eyes constantly scanning for animals. Or water. I still don't know what my face looks like. I don't see any signs of animal life for a while, and i'm beginning to become frustrated when I hear noise.
Footsteps.
Pawsteps?
I move toward the sound, slowing down even more and watching where I place my feet to make as little noise as possible. I creep around a tree and find a group of... deer things.
I mean, they look like deer to me. Four legs. Small tail. Hooves. Antlers. Four eyes. One mouth. Seems normal enough.
But they still seem off. It takes me a moment to place whats wrong, but when I do, everything clicks into place.
They're slow. Like someone set them to .4 speed.
Of course! I finally figured out what speed does! It speeds up every aspect of me, including my mind! That's why I never noticed a change after upgrading it, because I never had anything to compare it to! To test it, I pick up a rock and drop it. It falls, but slower than it it should.
When I had ten Speed, everything looked normal, moved at the rates one would expect. But since my speed is now over twice that number, reality seems like it has slowed down around me. That explains why, even though It felt like I was underground for so long, not even a day had passed when I came back up the surface, not even a day had passed.
Satisfied with my discovery, I turn my attention back to the deer, but they're gone.
Oh, me dropping the rock must have scared them off. Oops.
Now all I need to do is find a pool of water. I skitter off through the underbrush, heading even higher. Sometimes mountains have naturally occurring hot springs, right? I don't think I'm going to find any rivers up here, but maybe a hot spring. Or, when I reach the top, i'll be able to use the view to find some source of water.
I continue my skittering, resisting the urge to eat anything when I'm certain I need to be in my smallest form. The higher I get, the closer i'll be to any dragons who happen to fly by, and the more likely they are to detect me with magic bullshit.
Speaking of, there's one right now!
Flying off by some of the other mountains comes a slightly golden dragon, gaudy jewelry faintly glinting off it even from this distance. Several more dragons of varying colors of the rainbow follow the first one, all of them larger and stronger looking than the lead dragon. They aren't heading towards me, but towards something on the other side of the mountain.
Shit. Jewelry? That implies intelligence. And those big ones look like guards of some sort, so that lead dragon might be nobility of some kind, or a politician. Going by the fact that they're the only gold dragon i've seen, I'm gonna guess nobility of some kind. Worst case scenario, royalty.
I tiptoe behind a tree, and watch the procession as it goes, several mountains away. The fact that they look so big from so far away does not give me happy feelings. Growing like a foot in height is great and all, doesn't mean much when your opponent is bigger than most warehouses.
I really need to see what's on the other side of this mountain. Must be important.
Once the last of the dragons move out of my sight, I take off, moving as fast as I can. Getting to the top of the mountain was no longer something I was doing just for fun. I needed information, and that was the highest point around. Several times, I considered trying to grow wings and fly there, but I didn't, for a couple reasons. One. I don't know if it would actually work.
Two. Intelligent dragons in a world of magic probably have detection systems for other dragons, which may have been generalized to flying things in general. It's a bit of a stretch, but I'm not taking the chance.
The ground starts becoming steeper, but that doesn't stop me. My traction claws dig into the ground, providing plenty of friction and leverage to push off of. The ground starts to get more rocky, there are no more trees, and dirt becoming sparser. I suddenly realize that it's very cold up here, and that it doesn't affect me in the slightest. Good to know.
My mad dash for the top begins to slow. I can see the end. When I'm almost there I shift back into my base form and clamber up the last little ridge. If I had any breath, the sight would have taken it away.
Is that a goddamn dragon city?!?