My first thought is to go and find my missing parts, but I have no idea where to start. It's not like I was in a train and they fell out of the window, so I can backtrack my route. In other words, I'm stuck in this loli form for now. A loli in a white shirt and bloomers, which are actually nothing more than body paint.

Fortunately, this is a forest, so there are no wild beasts around who could be enticed by my appearance and attempt to eat me up. In the sexual sense. Unfortunately, this is a forest, so there are bound to be wild beasts that could be enticed by my appearance and attempt to eat me up. Not in the sexual sense.

Of course, all of the above was a red herring, because I'm actually staring into the eyes of one such beast, a wolf-like creature with a row of spines on its back, its shoulders about as tall as I am in my current form. Why is the first monster of these kinds of stories almost always a wolf? For now, neither of us is moving, but as if realizing that I'm alone, the beast sneers. At least that's how I perceive it, as it bares its sharp fangs and approaches me slowly.

Maou-mama, you didn't teach me how a Crawling Chaos fights. The image of the maou in elven queen form floats into my mind, looking away, closing one eye and sticking out her tongue. "Tehepero~" I flip a table in my mind in response.

I run away. There's nothing I can do with my small stature and little mass, and against a monster that seems more likely than not to be a member of a pack no less. If I kill it, it will most likely call out to its companions in its death throes. At least I'm confident in my running.

Obviously, I was wrong.

As if my short legs could outrun a canine's four legs! In fact, even if I were at full size, a wolf can still run faster than a human! It catches up with me in no time and pushes me down. Ahn, I'm gonna get ravished!

Sorry, now is not the time to make such jokes, I'm seriously in a pinch here. With a front paw on my back I'm completely pinned and unable to move. Its saliva drips on the ground next to me. The ground is sizzling and dissolving, oi! Acid saliva on a hunter-predator... why? Only the god of fantasy knows. Now it's sniffing me. I'm seriously going to get eaten! The story of Chaos-chan is going to end here, maou-mama. I'm sorry to disappoint you...

With a whimper, the wolf takes its paw off of me and runs away with its tail between its legs.

I cry. You made me cry with that attitude of yours! Take responsibility and eat me!

So that's how a Crawling Chaos fights in the wild? By being unpalatable? I'm sorry I was born, world. Nobody would want to eat something that would take precedence to a cockroach when getting a mosaic applied, right? Even though right now I look like I did when I was ten... I feel like crying some more...

With the immediate danger averted, I have time for such idle thoughts. Maou-mama, you sent me here for training, you said. Does that mean I have to survive in the wild on my own for a certain amount of time and you'll come and get me when the time passes? Or will I have to find my way back to you on my own? It would appear that at least I'm not a member of the natural food chain. Or so I hope. There may always be a monster that eats even things that look unappetizing or inedible.

Like me.

I'm so hungry, I could eat myself. It should have been only an hour since I had the human king as breakfast, but I'm starving. There's no cute rumbling noise from my stomach. Instead, it feels like I'm actually eating myself from the inside out, dissolving my body to create energy to keep me going. That's not the case, is it? Regardless, I have to find food, this is a really uncomfortable feeling. Is that how it feels to starve to death? I'm not exaggerating, that's how bad it is.

There the wolf is again. It's eating a small furry animal it just hunted. Noticing my approach, it moves around to keep me within its line of sight. I won't fight you over that small thing, alright? Since it won't satisfy me. I'll just take you instead!

Dissolving my appearance, I change into the shape I had earlier this morning. My arms and legs are made of tentacles, so if I unwind them, they should be longer than they appear. It's really strange, I instinctively know what I'm capable of, how to move all these individual appendages and use them to their full potential. This must be is inborn instincts.

Unraveling my leg tentacles explosively, they expand like a spring and I lunge forward. Taken by surprise, the wolf flinches and appears unable to respond in time, but I already latch onto it with my whole body, making sure to seal its mouth so that it can't call out to any potential friends. Time to eat.

It's only been around two hours since I've come to this world. If this is a dream, it's quite the long one. Still, within this time, I had a man inside me, and now I'm taking in a beast. Mama, papa, your daughter is so naughty, I'm sorry.

A living being is a completely different sensation from a steamed head. My body seems to be bigger on the inside, so I had no problem taking my prey in, even though it's more than three times my size. Since a Crawling Chaos seems to be very malleable, the beast's struggles are invisible on the outside, even though I can feel him stirring up my insides a lot. But it doesn't take long before it dies of suffocation or the pain of being dissolved alive. In either case, its movements stop and I can feel my strength returning.

So I'm actually quite strong? If I were a human, this wolf beast would have mauled me to death without me being able to even put up a fight. But now, anything that I can somehow put inside me can end up as food. Swallowing the entire wolf did not make me look fatter, so I really have a pocket dimension inside me, kinda like an RPG backpack space.

Now that the immediate danger of starving to death has been averted, let's gather some information. Even if I could wake up at any moment, let's enjoy the ride for as long as it takes. It's an adventure after all!

First things first, I need to find out where I've been transported to. It's not like I know any landmarks other than what I saw from inside my mother's castle, but I guess you could say that the barren landscape with the jutting jagged rock formations would indicate a certain proximity to the castle. In other words, I need to see how extensive this forest is first.

Therefore, I climb the tallest tree I can find. Halfway up I realize that using my tentacles to climb would be faster than doing it in my loli human form. But it's strange how quickly it naturally comes to me that I can utilize a method I wouldn't even have dreamt of using previously. Well, I guess now I am dreaming of it. Same for accepting that eating with my body rather than through my mouth is not only normal, but also more efficient.

Ah, this is bad. When I reach the top, all I can see is a sea of dark green, surrounded by mountains on all sides. This is most likely a valley inside a mountain range. Maou-mama, why did you send me somewhere this far away without even a return transportation circle for when you come to pick me up? Hah, don't tell me you just abandoned me here? Did I do something to anger you?

Hm, what's that? A huge cumulonimbus cloud is moving really quickly behind the mountains. Oh, it stopped, and now it's moving back to where it came from. That's no cloud... I have a bad feeling about this.

Now I notice that it looks more solid than fluffy, more like a mountain rather than made of condensed water vapors. So that's a living being? That's scary! I know which direction I will not be going in. But really, if those mountains are as tall as I think they are, that monster must be as tall as Mount Fuji. Actually, this is a dream, so why don't I go and check it out? Yep, I'll laugh danger in the face and rush headlong towards it. I'm sure that's the most fun way to spend an adventurous dream.

When I descend the tree, I'm surrounded by wolf beasts. I'm sorry I ate your friend, please accept his bones as a gesture of goodwill. It's not because they don't taste good and don't dissolve too well, alright? Here, I'll lay them out for you carefully, so you don't mix up a femur with a humerus. You'll eat him, right?

They growl in anger and tighten the circle. I'm sorry I laughed you in the face, danger-san! I can't fight this many at the same time! Back up the tree it is. I'm sure they can't climb. Ok, for now I'm safe, and I have time to think of a way to get out of this. Oh, I'm beginning to feel hungry again.

Maybe it's time to explore the limits of how my body works. I can feel that my teeth while in human form are actually as hard as the real deal. This means I should be able to create claws or even blades? Kind of like a certain alien race that takes over humans through their heads, I guess? Ah, it came out well. My hand changed into a curved blade. Doesn't look too sharp, but that should be up to training. Ah, I understand my mother's plan in throwing me out into the wild now. Then again, would somebody without the knowledge of the real world have come to the same conclusion as I have?

Let's refine this blade a bit. I test it on a nearby branch and it makes a clean cut. Wow, this is really sharp. Okay, time to work on my besiegers. How about extending my arm like a whip? I don't need my other arm right now, so I'll use its mass to make it even longer. Now, only need to make sure I don't fall off the branch I'm sitting on, like a moron. I can feel the strength of the muscles (?) in my newly formed blade whip, and I snap it down towards one of the wolves. It leaves a deep gash in its flank, causing it to whine and jump back. The others also take some distance and look up at me. Are they fearful or angry?

One of them jumps up and tries to reach me, but I'm too high up. I swing my arm just as it lands and cut off one of its legs. This is going really well!

Without warning, all remaining wolf beasts leap forward and bite at the trunk of the tree I sit on. Have they gone crazy at their impotence? No wait, acid saliva! Large sizzling holes open up in the tree where they bite into the bark and my base is shrinking. With the weight above the trunk, it'll topple soon. I'm sorry I got ahead of myself!

Now that it's come to this, I can only try and quickly finish them off before the tree falls over. Swinging my arm all over the place, I open large wounds in the wolves' bodies, but it's already too late. Snapping sounds emerge from the trunk and I can feel the world tilting. Before I get entangled in the branches, I jump off, right onto the back of one that lost a leg from my attacks. It's unable to flee, after all, and I pull it inside my body. Ah, some extra nourishments for the battle.

At the same time as the tree hits the ground, the unlucky wolf beast is fully absorbed. The remaining ones are mostly wounded, but it doesn't change the fact that I'm surrounded. And without hesitation, they all lunge at me with their fangs bared, ready to bite down on helpless old me!

They run into countless blades. Like a hedgehog, I changed my entire body into sharp spines, onto which the beasts impale themselves. Leave alone affecting me with their acid saliva, their mouths can't even reach my main body. When I retract the spines and change back into my loli self, a circle of carcasses surround me.

Itadakimasu!