Satisfaction. Flesh. A filled stomach. Hunger. Hunger. So much hunger. It was not enough. The meal was small. Too small. Too small for even an appetizer. I licked my teeth. Flesh? No flesh. No flesh in my teeth. No remnants, but I was still hungry.

I regurgitated a mound of flesh and slipped it out of the chest carapace. I traced the cold stone floor with my regurgitated mouth. I shifted my taste buds to the surface which swept the floors. I was hoping for a whole corpse, but I would settle even for a limb lost in the madness. I swept the whole room, savoring the precious little that waited for me on the floor. A few puddles of blood, specks of skin, strands of hair — it was all frustratingly little. So I expanded my search, releasing more tendrils of flesh as I swept the walls and the ceiling of the treasure room. A cobweb, stone, more stone…

I brought my tendrils together and pooled them into a large trunk that snaked its way out of the room. As the cord of flesh snaked its way towards the door of the room, I felt an uncomfortable stretch. With insatiable, primal hunger fueling my conquest, I continued stretching forward. The stretch was now on the verge of painful, my own flesh betraying me, screaming at me to stop. Still, I pushed on. If flesh awaited in the room ahead, anything would be worth it. As it just snaked past the door, my body was trembling. I felt if I stretched anymore, it would tear. Finally, to the relief of every muscle in my body, I relaxed. The cord of flesh quickly sprung back to the main mass of my body, a tingling burning sensation remaining in the portion of flesh I abused. No matter. I stretched the portion of flesh into the opening to my stomach, directed the blood vessels elsewhere, and detached it. My stomach now had something to digest as it melted my own flesh, but it gave no satisfaction. I needed other flesh. Breathing flesh. Adventurer flesh.

With the protein from the digested flesh absorbed, I reconstructed some of the muscles I sacrificed in the ordeal. As I considered where to reallocate the remaining protein, my hunger grew. My stomach roared. It demanded flesh. I felt I would have to tear apart my stomach if I had to continue without flesh for any longer… And that is exactly what I did. I tore at the flesh of my stomach with my teeth, cutting off the blood vessels to my stomach. I churned the fluids in my stomach, allowing my stomach to digest itself.

That was when the excruciating pain began. My stomach felt like it was on fire as it bubbled and sizzled under the toxicity of its own digestive fluids. I felt each piece of my stomach being torn apart into smaller and smaller pieces. I felt each speck being dissolved and digested as my own body devoured itself. It felt like the pain would never end.

And then it did. I realized at some point that my stomach was gone. That, certainly, was a problem. But, well, I could — probably — reconstruct it whenever my next meal decided to prepare itself.

That was odd. Concerning. When I thought about my next meal, a ceaseless primal hunger didn’t gnaw at me, overtaking all my thoughts. My thoughts of my next meal felt oddly… analytical. Screaming pangs of hunger faded, and my mind was left with an unsettling quiet. I felt as if I could finally think. My thoughts were less concerned with sating my hunger and more with simple, analytical self-preservation. If I did not find flesh soon, I would die, eventually. I could survive for months, though. Even if I had to sacrifice some flesh in the process, I could survive, even if as no more than a small puddle of flesh. It would be hard to die, even of starvation.

Still, I had no clue when my meal would remember that I was hungry. It could be soon, or it could be never. To err on the side of caution, I decided to reconstruct my body to prepare for my next meal, no matter when it decided to come. I prepared my body under the assumption that flesh would arrive some time soon, and I decided I would sacrifice unneeded parts and enter a state of dormancy if my wager was wrong and flesh decided not to come. My plan B to go with plan A. Contingencies for contingencies.

I began the intense effort of reconstructing my body. First, I started with the exterior. If I wanted flesh to decide to walk up to me, I had to look simply irresistible. I retracted plates of carapace which had apparently been damaged during the fight with the last meal, repaired them, and brought them out again. Then I constructed an eyeball and connected it to a tendril. I snaked the eye outside my mouth and circled it around my shell to gaze at my exterior as my meal would see it. A perfect mockery. Any adventurer who saw the gilded chest would surely waltz up to it without any hesitation.

With the exterior taken care of, I turned my attention to the interior. Now that I could attract the attention of an adventurer, I had to prepare myself for the more unruly sorts of adventurers. Some of them knew how to use sharp things — my flesh trembled at the thought, a phantom pain searing my flesh. Terrible things, blades. Still, they were useful. That was why I had several dozens of my own. Good for hooking onto flesh and tearing it into small enough chunks for my stomach to digest with minimal effort.

That reminded me. I had no stomach. It felt odd not having that primal obsession of devouring flesh consuming my every waking thought. Yet I still needed flesh. It was a necessity. But how did I know it would ever come? If flesh decided it would not come, would I be left to die? Would I be left to devour myself in a desperate scramble to conserve resources? I would certainly have to enter a state of dormancy. I would have to lose my thoughts, and I was not sure if I could turn them back on.

That scared me. I no longer feared starvation, but I feared not thinking. If my brain was deprived of energy or if I had to choose to shut it down to conserve resources, these thoughts would end, probably forever. Was I really willing to take that risk? I was not sure there was another option. I had tried searching for flesh beyond the room, but my body would not allow me. My body could only stretch so far.

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How did I even get here in the first place? I looked back in my memories, and I found very little. My memories were filled with my proudest catches, most appetizing meals, and my closest calls, but I could not piece together how I got here in the first place. Surely I had not been here forever. Did I just appear here and grow one day, or did I move here?

If I once moved myself here, could I move myself again? Perhaps my body could not stretch far from itself, but could I stretch my whole body out of this room? I could not depend on food coming here. The uncertainty of when my meal would ever come would be worse than any hunger.

I steeled my resolve. I could think of no way to bring the food to me — I had not the faintest clue where the adventurers came from besides "somewhere else" and not the smallest idea how I could compel them to enter the dungeon, so I had to bring myself to them. If I could not do that, I would at least have to learn about them, about what attracts them, about what convinces them to go into dungeons, about how I could continue my ability to think and eat forever. Lofty ideals for a chest.

Hesitantly, I expended more precious energy on reconstructing my body once again. For this design, I took inspiration from my food for locomotion. It seemed the adventurers used two appendages for locomotion — some corner of my mind remembered the word "legs" — though I had seen several adventurers with any range of locomotive appendages ranging from one to eight, but they usually used two. I concentrated a mass of muscle on the bottom of my body, and I dissolved the shell in two holes at the bottom of my shell. The muscle seeped through the holes, but it was stopped by the cold stone floor.

That was a problem. I had to form two legs, but I needed space beneath me to mold them. I would need some way to lift myself. It would take too much effort to shift the whole of my body up in an arched shape to form the legs. Thinking over the different ways I could do this, I decided on another pair of limbs similar to the upper pair adventurers usually had.

Swinging open my lid with an uncomfortable burst of energy, areas of muscle began to swell, stretching, duplicating. As the arms grew, I felt my resources rapidly draining. After growing two fat stumps which barely hanged over my lid, I felt a horror which I had not felt since I devoured my own stomach. I searched, analyzing every part of myself, running through each organ, searching through where each fatty deposit should be. I found nothing. No more useful body mass.

It seemed I would have to abandon the chest disguise. With the horribly inefficient boxy shape of the chest, I would need strong limbs to move at all. If there was one thing I had learned from all my meals, it was that nature liked round things. Additionally, the carapace was heavy, and any movement required concentration to adjust each scale so it reflected light at the right angle to be convincing. If the angle were slightly off, an adventurer would quickly recognize me for what I was. Hesitantly, I began dissolving my carapace. It felt wrong. I could not remember when I grew the carapace and took on the form of the chest, but it must have been forever. I could not imagine myself without the carapace.

A cold draft blew through the dungeon, prickling my now exposed flesh. My muscles instinctively shivered, providing a small spark of much needed warmth. With no carapace protecting my vulnerable flesh now, any adventurer would immediately identify me as a monster. I had to be quick about this.

With no resources left to form new muscle, I moved around, tore apart, and reattached vestigial muscles which I had to sacrifice for this endeavor. I sacrificed the muscles that I used to rotate and adjust the scales on my former carapace, my massive tongue which I grabbed adventurers with, my jaw with which I crunched their corpses. I felt a gloom come over me as I abandoned that familiar form. I was a chest, something with meaning. I was meant to hold things, shiny things! I was meant to protect them, keep them safe, guard them from the elements and buzzers and crawlers, shield them from all harm! I was meant to give these things a safe home while the adventurer who entrusted the items into me went on some lofty adventure, maybe to return one day, maybe not. It was my duty to be shiny and attract adventurers! My duty to devour them!

At least, it was. Now I was just a blob of flesh. A pile of red and pink goo? A puddle of disgustingness?

As I contemplated the precise word I wanted to identify myself with now that my previous form was gone, I tediously rearranged each cord of muscle, dissolving them and creating them anew. I was forming four beautiful limbs with which I would bring myself to wherever the adventurers came from.

While I was debating whether to label myself a "glob of goo", "medley of meat", or an "amalgamation of anatomy", I realized I need not be any of them. With the left over calcium and other useful materials from my carapace, I could form all sorts of useful things. Teeth, shells, more carapace, but most importantly, bones.

I made an audible gurgling of delight at the thought. Bones! What wonderful things! I would have to come up with a new label for myself! "Glob of goo" I would be no more! "Bulk of bones", perhaps? I could finally be a proper vertebrate! I could have my own backbone! I allocated the calcium toward the new limbs I was tediously growing, and I began constructing my new bones! I even began the workings of a backbone. As the bones began to form into some sort of shape, I knew they were not perfect. I would need to find myself a good skeleton to study and devour some day so I could perfect the art of bone and sinew.

I made another gurgling of delight from somewhere deep where my throat used to be as I was approaching the finishing of my new limbs. My legs were two thick trunks of meat with flat paddles on the bottom — I had the genius idea of putting a layer of carapace on the bottom of the feet to cushion the delicate feet from impact since I had no fatty deposits I could allocate. I tried skin, but it just kept tearing apart, and I had neither the energy nor the resources to practice.

My heart racing, a ceaseless bubbling in my vestigial throat echoing across the stone cavity I had called home for so long, I stretched out my new limbs, and I stood up!

…And immediately fell back down. Unfortunately, this would take practice.