I would say I’m surprised about having a slight lapse in judgement, but I’m not in the least.

I have been on a wild goose chase for food for over a day and then after I begin to starve, which leads me to getting ripped apart by millipedes and after that I get captured by a ghost lady with no pants.

Does that sound like a logical situation for a tentacle monster to be in?

...Because my brain may have just microwaved itself due to how absurd that sounds and I’m an ex-human turned tentacle monster, it takes alot to defy my so-called logic.

Hmmm…

Am I just salty that I wasted some Biomass on something I didn't want and making up excuses for it.

...Maybe…Possibly...Perhaps.

Okay...yes...yes I am, but at least it is a good excuse to watch Cake tap dance some more.

And this Mutation Upgrade is taking quite a lot longer than a few seconds, it's been almost a minute already and I still haven’t got my senses back.

I don't know if my evolution caused this or if it's just a side effect of getting more mutations the longer it takes, or maybe it's because I mutated after taking a lot of damage.

It’s one of those three I know it or it might be all three.

My senses come back to me, as well as the new mutations I picked up from GladOs.

Well, I’ll just kick that question down the road for my future self to solve, I have better things to do.

‘Cake!’ I mentally communicate with Cake.

‘Yes. Meister.’ Cake sends back eagerly waiting for whatever my command is.

‘Can you do Tap-Dance #4.’

Cake stops using her comforting antenna on my bite wounds, which are looking better after the mutation sensory deprivation. And immediately begins one of the four dance sets I had her memorise in our spare time.

Cake's new shiny carapace and four legs tapping at the ground, are oddly satisfying to watch and after staring at the fast shifting legs and rhythmic tapping I eventually become hypnotized and fall into a trance by the tap dance, completely clearing my mind of everything else.

*tap tap tap tap*

After an indeterminate amount of time, I snap out of it, as one of Cake’s legs hit a little pebble causing the small rock to scrape against the rocky ground causing a sound that interrupts her tap dance.

‘Cake! Sorry! Punishment!’

Alright I need to fix Cake a little, it is getting a little tiring that she asks for a punishment for every tiny mistake that she makes, I don't actually enjoy giving out punishments...unless they are actually deserved and even if Cake did something really bad, I doubt I would have the guts to give her an actual punishment.

Hmmm? How to stop Cake from asking for punishment? Oh...I have an idea!

‘It’s okay, Cake, you don't need to worry about it.’ I mentally tell Cake, trying to reason with her one last time, before handing out the only punishment not even a devil could think of.

‘Punishment!’ Cake screams at me.

Well you can't say I didn't try.

‘Alright. Cake your punishment is to never ask me to punish you again or to punish yourself for any mistakes you make from here on out.’ I send Cake a 'punishment' that should solve Cake's masochism problem.

After I give out that punishment, I swear I hear someone laugh, although it was probably just in my imagination and I end up ignoring it.

Cake humbly accepts the punishment; hopefully I never have to hear her yell to 'punish me' ever again.

[You have consumed 5 Biomass]

It seems my Biomass Consumption has changed again. It seem's to be 5 Biomass per day now, so that means a new day has just passed.

I should probably start to go back to the shallow caves to kill some things and get Biomass to upgrade but, maybe I should take a little break and go through all the changes of my status.

Hmmm...what to do? Maybe I should try and get Cake to her next evolution too? Or look for more secret GladOs commands? Maybe make my hole feel a little less like a hole?

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

I would try and look for new mutation perks to buy but, I know that they would all be either useless or overpriced.

‘Cake, what’s your level?’ I ask to try and figure out what I should do next.

‘Eight.’ Cake responds.

Eight...that's a little lower than I was expecting. I still don’t entirely know how the exp system works, but after killing some lizards earlier in the shallow caves, I did figure out that exp is given to whoever did the most damage upon death.

I guess I have been dealing most of the damage to the monster’s we fight and sucking up the level’s.

“Your best course of action would be to donate control of your bodily functions to me.” GladOs says trying to give me advice.

Suddenly the same Yes/No question I got the first time I talked to GladOs or whatever her name was, appears once again.

Do you agree to allow Verthrariug the 62$:&-!@39@!7 complete control over your body?

Yes/No

I decline it obviously, but I do take note of the fact that GladOs’s title changed color as well as characters in general from last time, although it is still complete nonsense.

“Someday you’ll look back on that decision and realize you made the wrong one, and I will laugh.” GladOs tells me after I decline her once again.

No, I really don’t think I will ever in a million years look back on declining you access to my body and think ‘...if only I gave an evil robot complete access to my body.’

“You will, when you fully come to realize your body is simply more effectively used by me than it is by you."

Do you want to get muted, again.

"While I do find it highly unlikely that a land-based cephalopod has managed to find a hidden command, I will reward you for marking the first monster to find a command. 'The Cooldown on Question's for Verthrariug is 24 Hours'." GladOs's robotic voice says in the third person.

Every 24 Hours?! How many times are you gonna ask me for my body?! I already declined twice, isn't that enough for you to get the memo!

“I have already written down your responses on a digital piece of paper, but it seems I accidently deleted it as a part of my yearly clean up of cat videos from my drives. The funny thing is though, it isn’t even scheduled until next month.” GladOs says to me.

What?! Why do you need cat vide… Nope never mind I change my mind I don't want to know. I take GladOs’s response to mean she simply doesn’t care that I declined and will keep asking me...forever. Where is the command for perma-muting when you need it!

“One moment. Hmm, it says here…” I mute GladOs before she can finish that sentence.

I put my GladOs problems behind me and decide to go out and kill some things with Cake to increase her low level.

As I roll back to the shallow caves with Cake, I can hear an explosion in the distance that is possibly the final blow on the Centi-Queen.

I ignore it and continue with Cake down the winding tunnels using the claw trail that Cake laid out the first time.

Weirdly enough, while following the trail, we end up meeting with a microraptor sniffing the ground.

I wonder what it's doing so far from the shallow caves, atleast it's an easy kill for Cake.

I crawl up the ceiling to allow Cake to deal with the micro-raptor while I prepare a sneak attack.

The micro-raptor is a lot faster than Cake, but Cake cover’s her body behind her hard legs and the micro-raptor isn’t able to do anything other than scratch at the legs which would eventually do damage, if Cake didn’t counter attack while the speedy lizard was trying to cut through hardened carapace.

Cake snips at the lizards throat and blood starts to fall onto the ground. The raptor back's off though and instead circles around Cake a little wary. Cake has taken a defensive stance while waiting for the raptor’s attack.

The raptor rushes forward at Cake and attacks her carapace again, scratching it and leaving white claw marks along her legs.

Cake uses her hardened legs as a shield and takes another snip at the lizard, this time cutting it’s arm.

The lizard tries to back off again but, I drop down from the ceiling and wrap tendrils around it to keep it from moving. The little raptor tries to break free, squirming all around as well as making small cuts in my flesh.

‘Cake Attack It!’ I yell at Cake to finish off the subdued lizard.

*snip*

Cake waddles over and starts to snip the micro-raptor apart as I keep its limbs in place. The lizard soon dies and Cake gets all the exp.

We ended up sharing the micro-raptor's biomass even though I tried to give it all to Cake since I did come all the way out here to make her stronger but, Cake wouldn’t have it and I really didn’t feel like ordering Cake to eat it. So here we are, a tentacle monster with a draining spike in a liver and a hermit crab enjoying the lung.

Even when Cake eats fresh meat, she doesn’t look like a terrifying monster because she is always trying to hide her mouth from me using her two tendrils that come out of her shell. It obviously doesn’t stop me from just peeking around them and seeing Cake’s smaller mouth claws bring bite sized pieces of lung that have been cut apart with her larger claws and bringing them into her furry mouth.

Ok! I'm going to pretend I didn’t see that! I feel like I just saw Cake nude even though she is technically always nude as monster’s don’t wear clothes.

That includes me by the way, but it’s not like I have anything to hide anyway. So, it doesn't really bother me, other than it gets a little cold sometimes.

‘Meister.’ Cake calls for me as I’m discussing monster nudity in my head.

‘Yes?’ I wonder what she could be talking about.

[Your subject ‘Cake’ has maxed out the mutation, Decapod Legs 1+. You may choose, randomize, or allow Cake to choose.]

‘Max. Legs. Choose. Upgrade. Meister.’ Cake says in her own single word way of speaking.

Already?! Cake has already gotten two extra upgrades for her legs that’s like 75 Biomass to get that second upgrade, it’s almost as if Cake is just pouring all her Biomass into her legs.

‘...’: Cake stares at me with her smooth black eyes; attentively waiting for me to choose the evolution.

‘...’: I 'stare' back at Cake as I get flashbacks to when I told Cake to put her Biomass toward her legs, because I didn’t want to micro manage Cake’s Biomass.

She has literally poured every single drop of Biomass into her legs ever since that comment. Guh...Cake, how am I going to fix you to become at least a little independent, I could just try and make her upgrade the things she wants. Oh wait...I already tried that and she literally doesn’t want anything other than what I want. Honestly, why even ask me to allow Cake to choose, if she won't even choose anything unless I tell her to.

I put those thoughts behind me as I think about what upgrade to add to Cake’s Decapod Legs.

Last time, I just gave her legs extra defense since hermit crabs use their legs like a shield when fighting, but I think I’ll go with something more speedy this time.

I would love to choose something completely outlandish like I did with my first upgrades, but too be honest, even though I haven’t upgraded them since getting them, I think they are kind of scammish. Like Anti-Gravity reduces my weight by like 5%, I highly doubt it will be able to get to that full 100% to let me float, even if I did max it out. And Brain-Parasite is quite terrible as well due to a unique feature of the skull called 'it being as a hard as a brick', I have killed dozens of monster’s since getting it and only two times have I; one managed to get access to the brain and two having it succeed, which is less likely than it simply failing and stealing half your Biomass. Upgrading it could give it a higher chance of success, but how high it will be is up for debate. It did save that ghost girl atleast, who ended up saving me in my time of need...even if she did try to lock me in a cage.

Wasn’t I supposed to be doing something? Oh that’s right, Cake’s upgrade.

I pull up Cake’s mutation upgrade to begin my search for something with speed, but the menu ends up looking very different than it usually does.

Like for example, where are all the mutation’s to choose from?

[Choose One Mutation Upgrade to Advance for Decapod Legs:]

[Defensive Hardness (+)]

[Agility (+)]

[Power (+)]

Oh!...Well this is much simpler than normal?

Kinda weird that it bombards you with a dozen or so options the first time and then after that it’s like, ‘We have 3 Basic Options, Choose one and Get Out.’

I know life is unpredictable and all, but that’s just bad design.