Below me were the remains of the insect battlefield. Above me was the head of this giant rhinoceros-like beast that was about to eat me. It really was a rock-and-a-hard-place situation. But despite how everything seemed lost, I wasn’t ready to give up yet - I just refused to. I was too young to die, alright? And I had way too many questions I wanted answered before I’d resign myself to whatever fate this stupid system had planned out for me! In fact, I would never resign myself to someone else’s plans for me! Thinking this I struggled and pulled, and soon I managed to dislodge one of my front legs from the wriggling worm below me, giving me some movement freedom.

But what now? I was hanging on by my other leg and the four on my backside, if I removed the other one I would probably not be able to hold on anymore and I’d plummet towards my death! The distances were hard to gauge given that I probably was a really tiny insect, but if I was human-sized it would be eight or nine meters downwards!

But I wasn’t a human, I was an insect. So the distance wasn’t that great, right? Only like twenty centimeters or something. Maybe I wouldn’t horrifically break all the bones in my body if I-

Wait. Wasn’t there something about… ugh, what was it? Biology class was always so boring, but something about how a body’s size and mass related to the ease of their bones breaking? How a horse could break its leg from a one-meter drop, where a human would make it without breaking bones, and an ant could survive a fall from the moon because it was so small? Did that mean I could just drop down right now and be fine?!

I cursed myself for remembering that too late, because right after that realization hit me, the jaws of the beast closed around us, and it began to drag its tongue along its top row of teeth, scraping off everything on it. From the small amounts of light shining through the gaps between its teeth I could see the mass of dirt and bodies building up fast. Yuck!

Wait, gaps? Yeah, there were plenty, and they were huge! Big enough for me to fit through one, for sure! I thrashed around a bit more until I could get my other leg unstuck too, but I did not pull it out all the way. I did not want to lose my grip and drop onto the sticky tongue right below me, after all… okay, there it was! Jump, grab onto whatever I could, and… success! I landed myself in an awkward position: I sat right in the upside-down V-shaped crack between two of the beast’s filthy teeth on its upper jaw, pressing my legs against them on my left and right to hold on for dear life. It worked surprisingly well. From my vantage point I watched with morbid fascination as the worms and ants were scraped off further down, building up against the teeth while the tongue prepared for the next sweep. So, I was safe for now… hopefully. But I was in a disgusting place! I thanked evolution right then for not giving this body of mine a nose or the ability to throw up, because even without being able to smell any of this, the sights by themselves would have made me upturn my stomach had I been a human.

Then again, my stomach felt awfully empty. I’d not realized this until now because of all the action and chaos, but I was actually feeling hungry. I’d not eaten anything since hatching! But what did insects eat? Plant matter, seeds, each other… but what about the diet of-

Scrounging opportunity detected. Toggle [Mooch] skill on?

What? Scrounging? Toggle? A window similar to the Status one that I’d seen earlier opened before me, displaying a short text. But I recognized ‘Mooch’, I’d seen that in my list of skills. But ‘scrounging’... it sounded disgusting but I decided to do it anyway: what was the worst that could happen? It wasn’t like I wasn’t backed into a really narrow corner, figuratively and literally, and a single misstep would end my life at the maw of a beast that was thousands of times my mass and probably didn't even know I existed. So… yes please, toggle [Mooch] skill on!

A weird sensation overtook my body as it began to move on its own. I watched as one of my claws reached over to the tooth next to me and skewered a chunk of some hard cream-colored thing that I frankly didn’t want to guess what it was made of. It brought the supposed food scrap beneath my eyes, where I felt my maw open and bite into it. I felt as though my stomach upturned when I heard and felt the crunch, and in a reflexive response I yanked my arm away and opened my jaws to drop the mouthful I was about to eat. It was just too much, I thought I was going to be sick! The peculiar sensation disappeared as I took back control over myself, and fortunately it turned out that the stomach turning was all my imagination. This body was unable to empty its stomach that way.

[Mooch] skill toggled off. Reason: user interference.

So... that was the effect of the Mooch skill? It had taken over my movements in order to… ugh. I did not want to admit it, but I had a good assumption of what it was: a skill that let me feed off the scraps and leftovers of this bigger predator. Although, I wasn’t sure why I would need a skill for that. Couldn’t I just do it myself?

Well to be fair, I was not all that used to moving my limbs around, and when it’d taken over my body it’d moved me in a fairly efficient manner. Maybe I should try it again, and this time not let the disgust take me over? I forced myself to keep down the shudder of nausea that was coming over me, and concentrated hard. Toggle [Mooch] skill on again, please!

The weird sensation returned, and I felt as though I was a guest in my own body as the skill resumed its work. At least, the scrap I’d skewered earlier hadn’t fallen off my claw, so it could pick off where it’d left off, minus of course the bit I’d dropped. Chomp, munch, munch, glup and the first mouthful was down the chute. Yeah, that was REALLY weird, watching myself eat and without tasting anything. Well, given the nature of what I was feeding on, it was probably for the best that I couldn’t taste it.

While my skill continued to move my body, I returned my attention to the ongoings below me. The two-horned beast was still eating, but its tongue sweeps were taking longer and coming up with fewer victims stuck to it each time. I noticed a few ant eggs among the bodies, but not nearly as many as I’d seen in the hatchery. Maybe they weren’t to its taste? Or was it too much to imagine that these animals had some instinctive drive to preserve nature and not wipe out the entire colony, thus allowing it to recover and grow in size to make for a future meal? After a while it swallowed, and much of the bounty caught in its maw was swept down into its stomach. I felt the tug myself, but my legs held on fine. It seemed like I was safe for now… so that was some good news amidst this whole fiasco. I didn’t want to jinx it though, and besides there was no guarantee that I was out of the woods yet. I’d have to sleep eventually, for one, and who’s to say my grip would remain as secure and tight as it was now?

Wait, what was that? I saw something move beneath me, but it was hard to tell in the dark. Then the beast opened its maw a bit, perhaps to lap up the remains of its little insect buffet, and I saw it. It was the first worm I had seen, the one that’d bursted out of the ground and later attacked me! It was stuck between two teeth similar to myself, and it was right below me! I’d caught a glimpse of a mark, maybe a battle scar or something, on its head when I’d jumped on its back earlier, and I saw it again now. There was no mistaking it, it was the same one. Maybe fate had decided to throw me a little bone after all it’d done to me!

Now I knew this was risky and I had told myself that I would play it safe, but this worm was a personal matter. It had tried to kill me! If I let this one chance for revenge fly by, the big beast would swallow, probably sweep the worm into its stomach and I would never get another opportunity. And if I was going to die here, I would at least want to die knowing I’d satisfied my petty urges.

Of course, I wouldn’t be entirely reckless either. I carefully slid down, extending my legs further apart like a gymnast doing the splits to maintain my grip on the teeth, until I was low enough to securely drop the rest of the way. The worm’s midsection was wedged between the teeth like a strand of spaghetti, with its head facing into the beast’s maw. It was too busy trying to squirm its way out of its predicament to notice me. I carefully gripped onto its backside and inched my way up to its front end. To attack it along the body would not do me much good: I’d seen how thick their protective outer layers were and how little it affected them to have a chunk torn out. I had to aim for a vulnerable area… now I wasn’t an expert in biology, but the head was usually a weak spot, right? And the neck, almost as much.

I found a good spot to strike where the skin looked sufficiently thin, tightened my grip as much as I could, and sunk both my front claws and my teeth into it. Take that! The worm froze for a moment then began thrashing around even more wildly, but this wasn’t my first rodeo! Well, I’d only had one on one of those carnival rodeo machines before, but that counted, right? What mattered was that I held on. I pulled out my claws and stabbed them in at another point, puncturing its body as deep and hard as I could and leaving behind deep bleeding injuries, while sinking my teeth in as hard as I could.

During the struggle, I inhaled air to take a short breather. That was when I felt some muscle above my palate - did I even have a palate as an insect? - tense a bit, and a slimy warmth filled the area where my nasal canals would’ve been.

Restored 0,01 HP.

Huh, I restored… HP? Health! That was good, since last I remembered, I was at 0,5. Still, wasn’t that a really low amount, one hundredth of a point? And what was with that warmth and the muscle tensing? … actually never mind, I couldn’t be bothered with that right now. I had myself a worm to kill. Take this! And that! And that, and that, and some of this!

Restored 0,01 HP. Restored 0,01 HP. Restored 0,01 HP. You have defeated [S̸̭̈̈́̓̾̋m̸̧̨̭̣͑̔͌̈̔à̴͇̂̏͆͌l̶̗̺̼̥͉͛͋̑l̷̪͉̄͛ ̷̥̤̭̠̥̈́̍͐Ȃ̶̻͓t̶̞̐͐͋͝l̸̟̬͐̍a̶̘̣̖̍ș̸̋͑̎͗͝ ̶͉̪̜͇̀̈͑̓W̸͎̙̤̎̀ő̵͕͕̓͜r̴͔͌̑̑̀͝m̸͈̭͇̌̌͐̚͘]. EXP gained. EXP threshold reached. [Nameless] has leveled up (New LV: 1). EXP threshold reached. [Nameless] has leveled up (New LV: 2). EXP threshold reached. [Nameless] has leveled up (New LV: 3). Skill proficiency threshold reached. [Leech] (1) has leveled up to [Leech] (2). Skill proficiency threshold reached. [Leech] (2) has leveled up to [Leech] (3). Skill proficiency threshold reached. [Piercing Fang] (1) has leveled up to [Piercing Fang] (2). Skill discovered: Giant Slayer

A number of notifications filled my vision as I struck the last blow and the worm went limp. Maybe I’d managed to hit an important spot? Either way, it was dead and I was not. But there was no time for a victory fanfare - I felt a really odd sensation coming over me, yet another one out of the several I’d experienced today. Worrying that it might be something like paralyzing poison from the worm flesh I’d bit into, I jumped with all my might and lodged myself back into my spot as high as I could between the two teeth. Then I waited, but nothing bad happened. No paralysis, no acid burning through my stomach, nothing of the sort. The sensation passed, and I felt… good. Better than before, in fact!

Right, now that I was back to relative safety, I decided to toggle the Mooch skill back on while I inspected the notifications more closely. Three level-ups… so that was good? Maybe because the worm was such a big and mighty creature compared to me, that it was worth more. That must’ve been where the strange feeling came from: my leveling up. Yet another very game-y system, by the way. I wanted to roll my eyes, though this body did not allow for that. This whole world felt a bit like it was a game, or maybe whatever gods had created it had taken a lot of inspiration from RPGs, whether of the video or the tabletop variant.

Now, what was with that messed-up text notifying me of my kill? Was something broken? I wouldn’t put it past this stupidly designed system to be full of glitches, bugs and crashes. Hm, what did it say? I had a bit of trouble reading it, but if I focused, I could make out the letters. Small… Atlas Worm. Not a species I’d heard of on Earth but I was no worm biologist. Still, I filed that name away in my memory for later use. Maybe I could even find out what the big fellow I was inhabiting the mouth of was called some day, although I had no illusions about being able to kill it to find out.

I’d also gotten level-ups for two skills… Leech and Piercing Fang. Like with Mooch, those were skills that I had seen earlier in my Status. But where would I have leveled up Leech? Wait… don’t tell me that that muscle I’d felt contracting had caused suction and the warm feeling was the worm’s blood that I’d sucked out! Eww!

Piercing Fang seemed like a pretty obvious one, my teeth had moreso punctured the worm’s skin and left tiny but deep injuries, than cutting or tearing it apart. The ‘Fang’ part made me wonder if that meant that the skill applied to my front claws or not. Although, all of this amounted to guesswork! It’d be much easier if I had a list of skills to take a-

[SKILL LIST (Nameless)] Obtained Skills:

Mooch (1) (R)

Leech (3) (R)

Dagger Proficiency (1)

Piercing Fang (2) (R)

Grip (1)

Discovered Skills:

Scout

Examine

Chitin Carapace (R)

Night Vision (R)

Giant Slayer

Oh! Well this had come out of nowhere, but then again I should maybe have expected it. My Status earlier had popped up when I had thought about opening it too… either way, this looked different from the list of skills I had seen in my actual Status earlier.

I took a closer look. The number in a bracket had to be the level of the skill, it was the same as the notifications I had gotten when killing the worm. Leech and Piercing Fang had gained two levels and one, respectively. Some of them had an R behind them, what did that mean?

Then there was this second list of “discovered” skills… So, what? Were these available for me to purchase? I also noted that the last two entries, "Night Vision" and “Giant Slayer”, were color-coded just like the Fates and racial choices. Now, if previous experiences were anything to go by, I could open those entries up to get further information. I had nothing else to do, and knowledge is power and all that, so I might just as well use my time productively! I didn’t want to move my legs to tap the screen, because I had Mooch going on still. So instead I tried to focus on the entry for “Mooch” and tap it with an imaginary mouse cursor. After a few moments, it reacted and a new window opened up.

[Mooch (1) (Common) (Racial)] Others kill, I eat bits. They no miss bits.

Effect: [Toggled] Eat bits from host food. Sleep or awake.

No eat other food.

More level more food.

[Information limited due to low mental capacity]

Seriously?! What was this kind of… ugh. Well, it stood to reason that a freshly-hatched insect would be simple-minded, and those other ants had not seemed very intelligent at all, save maybe for the Queen. And even she had spoken in half-sentences. What about me though? I had kept my human smarts! Hell, I was thinking in full sentences right now! What kind of weird disconnect was that, that let me be humanly smart but somehow my body was nowhere near that? Not that I was complaining, my intelligence had saved my bacon several times since my arrival already. Maybe with time this body would grow up and get smarter, so I’d be able to gain more information? I hoped that it worked like that.

Still, the info I got wasn’t completely useless. For one, I’d found out that the R stood for racial… which checked out, humans didn’t go around being mooches to… actually scratch that, some of them were. At least I had worked for my paycheck and didn’t try to marry into money or something, so I could count myself out! Still, I’d yet to hear of someone who exclusively fed off of the food scraps left between the teeth of some other animal… yuck. Okay, that was a mental image I did not want, so I hastily moved on. “Sleep or awake” I could make no sense of - did it refer to whether the host was sleeping or not? What did that have to do with me being able to use this skill? -, but “no eat other food”... this probably referred to my diet being restricted to eating mooched foods. Let’s check the other ones.

[Leech (3) (Common) (Racial)] Bite and drink juice.

Effect: Drink juice from others.

No eat other food.

More level more food.

Bite helps pain.

Juice no cause pain.

[Information limited due to low mental capacity]

[Dagger Proficiency (1) (Common)] Stab stab stab!

Effect: Fight good with stabbies.

Stab smart.

[Information limited due to low mental capacity]

[Piercing Fang (2) (Common) (Racial)] Stabby teeth for deep bite.

Effect: Bite strong.

[Information limited due to low mental capacity]

[Grip (1) (Common)] Grab stuff better.

Effect: Grab strong.

Grab long time.

[Information limited due to low mental capacity]

I grumbled a bit to myself as I inspected the bits of info, while [Mooch] had me chowing down on something crunchy that I sincerely hoped wasn’t a piece of chitin carapace from one of the ants. Knowing my luck, it probably was. Anyway, the other skills held no big surprises, except for the info on Leech. “Bite helps pain. Tasty juice no cause pain.” Could it be that this first bit was why I’d recovered some health earlier? The idea of vampires or vampire-like creatures replenishing their health by drinking the blood of their victims was an age-old trope in games and movies after all. But what about the second part? Did the skill somehow render me immune to acidic or poisonous blood? And the ‘no eat other food’ bit was written in here as well. So my dietary restrictions were mooched food and blood… at least the two skills didn’t cancel each other out, or I would be fated to a slow death by starvation.

[Mooch] skill toggled off. Reason: capacity reached.

Speak of the devil... What was that about capacity? That must be my stomach, which actually felt nicely full right now. Anyway, back to my Skill list. I hadn’t inspected the “discovered” skills yet, after all.

Why did it have Chitin Carapace on here, anyway? Didn’t I already have a shell? Maybe this skill would somehow strengthen it. Night Vision felt self-explanatory enough that this “limited” text wouldn’t give me more info, so I’d just skip it for now, but what about the other ones?

Chitin Carapace (Common) (Racial) Reqs: Be an [Insectoid]-type creature. Hard shell good protect!

Effect: Hard shell protects

[Information limited due to low mental capacity] Unlock cost: 1 Biomass Scout (Common) Reqs: Spend any amount of time by yourself in untamed lands. Good for finding stuffs!

Effect: Be good at seeing stuff.

Be good at moving in bad lands.

[Information limited due to low mental capacity]

Unlock cost: 1 Skill point Examine (Common) Reqs: Exhibit a sufficient amount of curiosity and interest in the world around you. Find out more!

Effect: Be good at finding out stuff.

[Information limited due to low mental capacity]

Unlock cost: 1 Skill point Giant Slayer (Uncommon) Reqs: Slay an opponent whose level is higher than yours by 20 or more. Big foe big weakness!

Effect: Hurt big foe harder.

[Information limited due to low mental capacity]

Unlock cost: 2 Skill points

At least the requirements weren’t written in that dumb insect-brain speech pattern. Still, I definitely needed to improve this ‘mental capacity’ deal, or I would never get anywhere… well I’d at least found out one thing: if I understood correctly, Biomass was spent on unlocking racial skills, whereas Skill points unlocked the non-racial ones. That was one question I could tick off my list, though I still didn’t know how I was going to earn Biomass. All those skills had a cost of one, except Giant Slayer which was more expensive for some reason. Maybe because it was rarer than the rest? This inspection raised more questions than it answered… ugh. Well, I could consider buying skills once I knew a bit more about them. But for the time being, as disgusted as I felt from doing this, I felt like my best option for survival was to stay in its maw, mooching away while I figured out my next steps.

Remembering that I had healed a bit earlier, I decided to check my Status again. Maybe there was going to be new information.

[STATUS (Nameless)] Race Small Inferior Parasite Hatchling [Monster] [Insectoid] LV 3 Skill Points 3 Biomass 0 Traits N/A HP 0,54 / 1 MP N/A SP 0,31 / 1 Skills Mooch (1) Leech (3) Dagger Proficiency (1) Piercing Fang (2) Grip (1) EXP Modifier 250%

Checking my status, it looked good too - my stamina had actually gone up a bit, to 0,35 out of 1. So with my stomach full, maybe the next thing to do was to get a good nap if I wanted to replenish that.

I guess the big question was, what did I want to do? Find a way home? Depending on what this world was like… not really, actually. If I could find some way to live a relatively normal life with the modern-day luxuries I was used to, I’d be happy enough. But, I was a damn insect and a monster no less, so I could trash that dream. Going back home would be nice. Come to think of it, who even noticed I was gone? I was an only child, estranged from my parents, living away from blood relatives except uncle Fred who I worked for, no girlfriend… heh, the ones that’d notice my absence first would probably be my guildmates on our MMO Friday raid night. Then my job on Monday, and all sorts of companies when I stopped paying bills after that. That thought process felt depressing, so I steered my thoughts a different way.

I could try to figure out what was going on, maybe? Who the ghost was that I’d met and why I had even been brought to this foreign world? Sure, but I had no idea where to start, so that’d have to go on the back burner for the time being.

Survival was my priority first and foremost. Couldn’t do much if I was dead, after all. I’d found a relatively safe place to stay and feed myself, but I couldn’t stay here forever - the beast I was mooching from would not stay oblivious to me forever. Or it might be killed by some bigger predator, or hunters… I sure hadn’t forgotten about the description of that Fate that I’d been forced into, what with the locals hunting whatever monsters might grow too strong.

Perhaps I should consider raising my level and getting my hands on more skills. I had no idea what leveling up did, but if I went by RPG logic it could only lead to good things, right? And the same went for my skills, they would make my survival easier. On the other hand, I did not feel comfortable with just picking new skills when I had a limited number of skill points at my disposal, and such limited knowledge about what they did.

So, let’s recap… survival. Find a way to make this insect brain bigger. Figure out where I was and what was going on. And maybe try to find a way home. But first, a good nap.

I wasn’t sure about whether it was a good idea to go to sleep when I was holding myself in place, but the space between the big fella’s bottom teeth, where I would not have to fight gravity, also meant I would have to deal with its saliva and its tongue. I couldn’t see it now since it had closed its maw after finishing its meal and everything was dark, but I knew it was sitting right there, in the bottom of its maw. If I fell on that, the sticky surface would hold me and it’d be Game Over for me. So I went as high as I could and wedged my body into the gap between the teeth to fasten myself in place as securely as I could. I also adjusted the grip of my legs and claw arms to keep me from falling should I be dislodged. With nothing to do but to trust in the security of my [Grip] skill and that I would be woken up if I fell or something. That was all I could do for now.

Everything else I would have to figure out tomorrow. For today… yawn. Good night, big guy. Good night, me.