Chapter 2. Hatching and Crawling

I woke up with another headache, causing me to fear this will become a permanent thing every time I regain consciousness, but thankfully, the unpleasant sensation didn’t last long.

Through the grogginess, I tried remembering the last moments with God, but they were a blur. He said something that I couldn't entirely recall, and then said another thing about reincarnation. That’s right! He was about to reincarnate me. Reincarnation means being reborn, being reborn into something non-human.

An indescribable dread assaulted me. I should have pressed God for more details, but he already had refused to answer when I asked the question directly. There were no more options than to suck it up and wait for the ‘surprise.’

This comes without saying, but I don’t like surprises.

God, cosmic manager, alien overlord, it didn’t matter what he was —or even if there was a ‘he’ in the first place— but he had an entire catalog of nasty creatures at his disposal. I only had my pathetic Earthly knowledge, which consisted in a compilation of Nat Geo documentaries, and whatever I could remember from biology class.

Everyone has a breaking point, so I could only hope that the world I was going to be reincarnated into wouldn’t be too unknown.

It felt like an eternity, as I had no way of actually measuring time while in complete darkness.

At some point, I realized the dark surrounding me wasn’t some divine enlightenment like me swimming through the endless void between dimensions, but merely the lack of vision that comes with having the eyes closed. I couldn’t say if I succeeded in opening them though. I tried, but every effort of mine was still met with darkness.

Perhaps I don’t even have eyes.

Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it.

I focused on my other senses as a distraction mechanism. Touch was the first one I perceived. Wherever I was, it was cramped. I could barely move my body to the point it was still unclear how many limbs I had —if any.

And with sight benched at the background of my thoughts, I concentrated in my hearing. All exterior noise was buffed down and indistinguishable, but there was a fast thumping sound coming from nearby.

A beating heart. I didn’t celebrate it though, as many things had a heart.

With time, my hearing improved substantially, and I started to discern some of the sounds coming from my surroundings, like crawling and clicking, definitely not the reassuring kind.

While I was in that state, I could feel the tension building up to something, so I remained expectantly. To be honest, I don’t know what I was waiting for, but not even in my wildest dreams I would have predicted that.

A single sound, short and precise startled me after coming out of nowhere, but it was in no way as confusing as the ‘screen’ that followed.

Gestation completed with 1 error(s).

WARNING: Archival integration failed. The current host isn’t suitable for the procedure. Further evolution is mandatory. Process halted until minimum parameters are met.

Initialize hatching now? Y/N

What is this? I can’t make heads or tails of it!

As the only thing in sight that screen was difficult to ignore no matter how hard I tried. And besides the obvious question the screen made, I wondered what it was. It immediately felt familiar, but all I had so far were half-baked theories that I didn’t dare to explore.

Concentrating on simple things, for now, seemed like the smarter idea. The screen made a simple question. I wasn’t precisely fond of the idea of me hatching, as it involved coming out from an egg, but the curiosity was growing too big to bare.

Yes. I thought, and the screen closed, followed by a crunching sound. The egg or cocoon I was inside, was cracking open. The pressure upon my body slowly decreased, and faint rays of light peaked inside the shell still apprehending me.

Wait, light?

Indeed, I wasn’t blind. I could see, perhaps not perfectly, but shapes and colors were easy to distinguish the closer they were. Sadly, finding I had sight was only a moment of relief that wasn’t meant to last.

When enough pieces of the shell had fallen apart, I grew impatient, struggling with my own body to shatter the rest of the carcass and made my way out. I finally achieve it. At one point, my efforts produced results, cracking the egg in two and sending me into a pool of orange goo.

But what I saw next had no name.

After pulling my head above the liquid’s surface with extreme difficulty, there were dozens, hundreds of more spherical green eggs covered in bile hatching simultaneously. Gray, worm-like creatures with a single red eye were crawling and twisting outside of them just like me.

Now I have become a nope, the stuff of nightmares.

Unsurprisingly, cracking jokes didn’t reduce the stress, and what came after made everything even worse.

General Information. Name: {Pending} Sex: Female. Species: Hivemind. Age: 2 minutes. Subspecies: Arachnid Larva. Biomass level: 1/5. Physical and mental estimates. Strength: 6. Intelligence: 124. Constitution: 5. Agility: 4. Status. Vitals Saturation Regen-rate Health: 28/28. 0.001/second. Mana: Unavailable. — Stamina: 18/18 (23). 0.009/second. Status Effects.

« Newly Hatched » { -5 max stamina. }

« Manaless » { No access to mana-based skills. }

I froze.

Ow, shit!

That just confirmed one of my biggest worries.

The last video game I played was five years ago, around the time I joined the Carmona as their private surgeon. But I had played games during my entire time in college to know the screen in front of me was a status page. My status page.

I did not want to believe it, but many things were feverishly matching that pattern at this point.

Great! This is great! I am a bug on the brink of a total mental breakdown, and now reality has warped into a game.

My heartbeat got erratic all the sudden, my breathing troubled and the newfound vision I was glad of having, was being funneled through suffocating darkness. It was just too much to take in. Human or not, I recognized the symptoms immediately.

I was fainting and fast.

Trait [Panic Resistance] obtained!

I wasn’t thinking at this point, so I don’t know what I did, but since it was helping, I just kept at it.

[Panic Resistance] has reached level 2!

[Panic Resistance] has reached level 3!

My breathing regain its rhythm, the tachycardia subsided, and I no longer felt as stressed as before. By the time I regained my composure, the last text had appeared.

[Panic Resistance] has reached level 4!

With the crisis averted, I had the luxury to feel troubled about these messages. There was no doubt about the game-like features in them, but without them, that panic attack could have been severe.

I figuratively shook my head. After all, I had no neck.

At least, from a particularly twisted point of view, this made things more convenient. Being a worm in a reality with game-like elements took my mind away from the worries I had before. There was no need to think about my higher purpose if I was just a simple bug.

Now the only goal that mattered was surviving this place.

I didn’t have many friends during college, and even the few I had at the time were just as socially awkward as I was. Life was much easier to confront with a VR system, pretending I was someone else. Video games, movies, and even the good-old paper books provided me with an escape like any other. Those were great days until I, as every person in the world, had to face my issues and grew up.

Seeing the screen mixing with the game-like elements brought back those memories, but now it wasn’t a game and comforting. Now it was real and stressful.

After I sat over my vermin’s butt, I took the opportunity to sift through my status page, aiming to get the hang of it.

Scrutinizing the screen, I found it pretty straightforward with the display of information. Everything worthy of mentioning was there, from my general status, health, mana, stamina, and even attributes.

The first thing I noticed was that the field in front of my name got a {Pending…} label on it. I relished the opportunity of renaming myself, but since picking names for stuff, animals, or even inventing monikers for other people was something I always sucked at, I just went with my current name instead.

I focused on my full name and a confirmation screen popped up, which I accepted.

Everything else in the virtual screen seemed to be on point. Or perhaps it wasn’t?

The hard immediate truth was that I had no way of knowing what the standard on this world was.

I distrusted that my attributes were marvelous from the get-go, mainly because I was a larva, and second, there was a vast difference when compared to my intelligence.

The more I stared at the screen, the more questions I had. What did it mean that my level was 1/5? What happened after I reached 5? Why couldn’t I use mana? What was the ‘Archival’ from before? So many unknowns existed, and I didn’t want to base my next actions on a guess. A very uneducated guess.

Then I remembered God saying he was going to give me something to start out. If this was a game-like reality, then it couldn’t hurt to try. The existence of skills was pretty much confirmed at this point, and since they weren’t listed on my status page, I figured there had to be another window specially dedicated to them.

Skills!

As expected, the skill page opened with a simple thought command.

Blessing [Adaptability] → Allows the control of your evolution once the requirements are met or by putting yourself in dire distress. Blessing [Assimilation] → Allows the absorption of attributes and new skills by consuming their former user. Trait [Panic Resistance] → Reduces the chances of succumbing to fear. Level 4/10 Trait [Prey Instinct] → Increases the chances of sensing and avoiding danger. Level 1/10

There were only four skills on the screen, but I wasn’t let down by that.

Ignoring the fact that [Panic Resistance] just saved me moments ago, both [Adaptability] and [Assimilation] were too good to be true. But perhaps they were genuine. It made kind of wicked sense for someone like God to be giving these skills like if they were candy, even more so if I was now technically working for him.

[Prey Instinct] also seemed interesting, but never within the realm of the other two. That skill had to be something similar to a sub-species trait. It fitted well to a larva having it. Pitiful creatures born only with the ability to fear.

In any case, now I had some answers. My best guess was that the level cap at 5 was the requirement I needed to fulfill to evolve. But how I was going to accomplish that remained to be seen.

As soon as I was finished examining my skills, I relaxed on the pool of orange sludge. Don’t get me wrong; the scenery around me would be very stressful for anyone, as hundreds of larval creatures passed by my side, but I was counting on [Panic Resistance] to work its magic.

After taking the opportunity to look around, it appeared I was in some cave, barely lit by strange blue glowing mushrooms growing nearby the low-leveled pool.

I didn’t feel as small as the word larva would imply though, but more about the size of a rat.

Eventually, the hunger started getting in the way with my clear thinking, so I decide following the other worm-like creatures to wherever they were going.

I probably had sacrificed the rest of my animal instinct at the expense of maintaining my former intelligence and personality, so in consequence; I had no idea of what to do.

After reaching the highest point of a small hill, I got a glimpse of the carnage that was ensuing.

Now the sounds I heard earlier made an astonishing amount of sense.

The other larvae were crawling to a small opening far into the cave, but at the same time, they were being hunted down by bigger and nastier looking predators from the left and right flanks. The bug’s strategy was a simple one: searching safety in numbers while hoping some would make it until the end.

Is this some sickening rite of passage?

I wasn’t going to leave my survival at random, but my options were limited. The best chance of surviving this was entering the flock on the middle, but even that had its risks as there were flying monsters snatching some of the worms crawling there.

Desperate times called for extreme measures.

Hear me vermin, by the authority place upon me, I, Morgan Felicia Taylor, command you to stop.

It didn’t work.

Did I get something wrong somewhere? Aren’t hiveminds able to control countless of creatures? Where were my minions?

Fuck this shit! I am out! I don’t want this! I tried to curse, but only a creaking squeal came out of me.

Apparently staying at the pool during all that time was a mistake, but the more I waited now, the fewer the worms would remain and provide me a meat-shield against the unknown horrors.

Here goes nothing then.

When the next wave of my kin was about to leave, I placed myself in the middle and started crawling as if my life depended on it, because actually, it did.

I estimated the distance between me and the small hole to be approximately around fifteen to twenty meters away (49.2 ft — 65.1 ft). That may not appear to be much, but when you are crawling at the speed of a slightly faster snail, you may as well be a gold-medaled Olympic athlete running around the world.

And to make things worse, during the whole ordeal I had the constant reminder of the surrounding danger by the permanent squealing of those who were snapped away from the shadows, followed by the crunching and squishy sounds they made moments before they were dead.

So yeah, being reminded all the time of the noise my body would make before being eaten wasn’t precisely my idea of fun.

Luck played a part of it because somehow I managed to stay in the middle of the swarm, focusing all of my attention on [Prey Instinct] hoping it would give me an advantage.

Anything was worth using, and every time I got the sense something was off, I started crawling faster, changed my location or stay close to another worm for protection. Surprisingly, it paid off on more than one occasion, when the other bug I was hiding nearby was snatched away by giant wasp instead of me.

Pride doesn’t exist when you are a bug running from other bugs. The only options were crawling or staying and becoming food. Simple really. Simply disturbing.

I made it!

Eventually, I reached the entrance of the inner cave and fell on the inside exhausted. Messages flashed through my single eye while I tried to recover my breath.

[Panic Resistance] has reached level 5!

[Prey Instinct] has reached level 2!

I tried to sigh since there wasn’t even a single level up for me.

At least, I got definitive confirmation the skills leveled with use, so that was something.

With death averted, I’d to start leveling myself because no matter how many times [Panic Resistance] got a level up and worked its charms, I still feel fear.

I didn’t want to die, again, and just because I couldn’t succumb to panic didn’t mean I wasn’t scared shitless about the current situation.

[Panic Resistance] was more a curse than a blessing. The reality was written in stone, and I had no way of denying it. Madness wasn’t an option anymore.

This was real, I knew it, and now I had to deal with it.