I awoke to a dim light shining through the small tunnel system. 'The morning sun' I thought. 'But why is everything slightly green?' At that point, I also realized that, while I should have been laying on a stone floor, I felt an odd floating sensation instead.

'It's rather comfortable.' I thought about returning to sleep for a moment.

 "..."

'WAIT WHAT FLOATING WHAT' I was suddenly very awake and tried to scramble around for something to grab onto, but only ended up spinning around uselessly inside my seemingly gelatinous prison. I'm stuck in the middle of a slime half a meter from any of the sides.

'Okay, calm down, think of a plan. I'm not losing any health, so either it isn't trying to eat me, or it simply can't. I seemingly don't need to breathe either, otherwise, I probably would have simply drowned in my sleep.'

I then realized that small pieces of matter were coming off my body and being dissolved into the slime. which terrified me for a short while, until I realized the pieces weren't my matter. The slime seemed to be eating the bits of grass off my knuckles and the splattered ant intestines and blood that painted most of my front half.

'Wow, I did not realize I was that filthy.' Apparently, my little dip in the river on my way into the cave did little to clean the caked on blood from my arms and head. The feeling of being cleaned by a slime was rather strange, like being licked on every square inch of your body at the same time. 

The slime's incredibly thorough cleaning lasted a few more minutes while I did my utmost to remain calm. The slime then began shuddering for a few moments before I was excreted back into my little cavern.

'Well, that was interesting.' I thought to myself while watching the slime move away. The slime was barely visible in the dark cavern, an almost transparent green colour. It slowly jiggled towards the river and sucked up a rock covered in what looked like algae. With a squelching sound, it began cleaning it off and absorbing the debris, just like it done to me. 

I looked down at my freshly cleaned body, practically shining in the dim morning light. 'This is probably the cleanest I have ever been. Alright, enough about that, time to make a plan.' I gathered myself together and started thinking about what I can do. 'I can't really explore deeper into the cavern without a source of light.' Or so I had thought, but deep in the tunnel, I saw a small amount of light reflecting off the water, giving off a strange blue glow.

I edged around the slime, still eating near the river, and started to move through the shallow waters towards the dim blue light. The water was ice cold, and I could somehow feel that it was cold, but the chill didn't seem to affect my stone body in any way. As I neared the light, I realized it was pouring out of a small cave system on my right. I pulled myself up the riverbank and into the tunnel. The tunnel was about a meter and a half tall and the walls somewhat smooth to the touch. The glow was coming from just up ahead of me around a small bend. I proceeded as quietly as my stone body could muster, which just so happened to be very loudly. I peeked around the bend and was finally able to see what was causing the glow.

It was just a group of glowing mushrooms. Their bioluminescence was what had been lighting up the tunnel. 'These should make exploring the tunnels much easier.' I thought. I picked up one of the glowing blue mushrooms to take a closer look at it. The mushroom was barely bigger than one of my fingers and had little tendrils draping down from the cap. The glow was coming from small blue pustules hanging on the end of each vine. The light from the mushroom was started dimming the second I pulled it out of the ground, however, and it was now almost completely dark. 'Looks like I can't just pick them up and carry them around like a torch.'

And so I ate it. The mushroom was chewy and tough, practically rubber. The little pustules popped in a mess of blue goop and left a bitter taste in my mouth. "blegh, that's disgusting" I grumbled, And then the popup I was expecting told me that it was completely worth it.

You have obtained the skill: Glow

Active: release a soft glow from a portion of your body

Mana cost: dependent on area covered and brightness

'Alright, now I just need to figure out how to activate it.' 

"Glow!" I said with a stern gravelly voice.

But nothing happened.

"Glow activate"

"Activate glow"

"Go go gadget glow"

'Maybe I'm going about this the wrong way? I mean, that last one was just plain stupid.' As I thought about it, I realized that if skills were activated by chants, everyone would always know what you were doing next. I looked down at one of my fingers, imagined just the tip of the finger lighting up, and simply thought the word 'glow' rather than saying it out loud. 

The tip of my finger started shining a pale blue, just like the mushrooms. 'So it's based on image, then that means, if I imagine the tip of my finger being as bright as a flashlight-'

My finger lit up far brighter than the mushrooms, causing the dim light in the cave to be completely outshone and draining away at something inside me. I thought of the light going out, and just as quickly as it had started, the light was gone. I checked my status and realized that in that very short amount of time I had lost 11 mana. 'I wonder if there is a better way to check my current health and mana than checking my status every time?' As if responding to my thoughts, two small bars popped into existence at the upper left of my vision, one red and one blue. They showed my current health and mana, and their respective regeneration speed in brackets. 

Due to a special action, Wisdom has increased by 1

'That is even better than I had hoped.' My health regeneration is showing (0.8) and my mana is showing (1.2). My health was currently full and my mana was going up slowly. 'Now I just need to find a balance between the brightness and my mana regen so I can keep 'glow' active permanently.

I focused on my finger again, slowly adjusting the brightness as my mana regen dipped from (1.2) to (1.1) all the way down until it was (0.1). and then I left it there so my mana would keep regenerating. The light was now slightly brighter than a candle flame, barely enough to dimly see 5 meters ahead of me. 'Still better than being completely blind in here.'

Due to a special action, Intelligence has increased by 1

'Did my thoughts just speed up slightly? Or was that my imagination? I wish there was a help function. My mana bar visibly extended slightly as well, which will be nice once I get something to really use it on.'

Again, I started wandering through the winding tunnel. There was only one path so far, As such I wasn't worried about getting lost. There were more of the glowing mushrooms here and there on the path, but I didn't need to eat any more of them as the 'glow' skill showed up in my skill list as level 1(MAX). 

About 20 minutes later I reached a dead end. No giant cavern, no dungeon, no monsters, Just a wall.

'Well, that was boring.' I thought and spent another 25 minutes walking back to the entrance of the cave.

It was still early in the day, so I decided to check out another of the tunnels, this one slightly further down the river from my current sleeping quarters. This tunnel opened up as I walked through it, nearly 2 meters tall and 3 meters wide at the largest parts. The deeper I went into the tunnel, the more of the strange glowing mushrooms there were. By the time 10 minutes had passed, I turned off my 'glow', as the light inside the tunnel was now even brighter than my own. The mushrooms were practically a carpet at this point, and my feet were getting covered in blue rubbery bits and even bluer goop.

'Yuck'

I walked a short distance further and the cave opened up into a huge space, absolutely filled with glowing blue mushrooms. It was as bright in here as the noonday sun, although everything was still tinged a slightly blue-white. In the very center of the room was a stalagmite a meter and a half tall, with a translucent brown crystal tip of about 15 centimeters. The crystal was pulsing every few seconds letting off its own light brown glow. Every time the crystal pulsed, the mushrooms would grow a shade brighter and then dim again, almost as if the whole cavern was breathing.

The pulsing seemed to reverberate right to the center of my being, drawing me closer as it dimmed and lightly pushing me away as it glowed. Every time it dimmed, I took a step closer. Every time it pulsed I fought the instinct to pull back. 'Whatever this thing is, I'm eating it.' The pressure on my mind and body grew as I drew closer to it. By the time I was 2 meters away, I was standing in a ring of mushrooms. They seemed not to be able to grow past a certain point, which was understandable, considering the pulsing now felt like being hit with a sledgehammer made of air. 

I steadied myself for a final push and began counting the timing of the breaths. '1 second of force, then it pulls for 2 seconds. I can make it.' 

I waited for the pulse, knees bent slightly and waited. After the pulse, I sprung forward and leapt onto the stalagmite. I grabbed the crystal with my right hand and pulled as hard as I could, but I couldn't shift it at all

And then it pulsed.

My arm exploded from my hand to my elbow, shards of rock scattered in all directions, pelting my face and chest with high-speed projectiles and ripping through some of the mushrooms.

"AARRRRGGGH"

I screamed in pain as my health dropped below 25% 

My body screamed at me to escape, but I forced myself forward. As the pulse ended I pulled my body forward with my remaining arm and clamped down onto the crystal with my dagger-like stone teeth, chewing and swallowing it as fast as I could. I managed to swallow most of the crystal and got a popup.

You have gained the skill: Novice Earth Manipulation

Active: Enforce your will on the element of earth, bending it to suit your needs

Mana cost: Dependent on use

'Earth Mana Crystal' has been ingested

Due to the Glutton skill, you have gained 5 levels in Novice Earth Manipulation

Due to a special action, Vitality has increased by 1

'Hah! I win'

And then the last piece of crystal still in my mouth pulsed, and my head exploded, dropping my health to 0.

Name Raak Race Earth Elemental Str 4 Vit 5 Dex 1 Int 3 Wis 6 Hp 70 Mp 75 Skill List - Passive Level Glutton 1(MAX) Crystal Core 1(MAX) Novice Photosynthesis 1 Novice Hand to Hand Fighting 1 Skill List - Active Level Glow 1(MAX) Novice Earth Manipulation 6