Reincarnated As A What?

Chapter 4 - Spores

The area was generally better lit than the previous one and the ground was far less stable. There were large rocks and piles of dust all over the ground. The ground was also generally rougher and had more slopes along it. And I could see them. There seemed to be a higher density of creatures on the higher level. There were large rats, slimes, some kind of mushroom thing, and of course Monadas.

Most of them seemed to be huddling together in clumps asleep while there was a squadron of rats feasting on the corpse of a Monada. I decided to approach the sleeping Monadas. Was that really what I looked like?

They just looked like cute silvery grey bundles of fluff with fluffy cat ears and cute little feet placed on the bottom of their legs that were so short they couldn't even be seen under the fluff. They were purring softly as they slept.

I wasn't entirely sure I'd be able to kill them. They were too cute. And with so many of them huddled together surely it was impossible to be able to gain XP from them. But I knew I had to, my life would be miserable sitting around with their life. Spending all day walking around a pit eating bugs off the floor or whatever they eat. Constantly fearing that I'd be killed by a rat or slime, or anything really. After all I was basically the weakest monster type that existed.

So I did what I had to do. I probably felt braver because I had already died once recently so dying at that point might even be setting things right, as they should be. But I managed. I bit the back of one of my own kind. It was terrible. I started to cry. How could I bite something so cute and harmless and sleeping?

My teeth seemed to be fairly sharp as I managed to relatively easily tear off the skin, but my jaw was too weak to do any real damage. Luckily the flesh was soft like butter. It was probably the softest meat I had ever eaten in my life. If I had no tastebuds I'd probably have told you that it was the most delicious piece of meat I had ever had. But I did have tastebuds, unfortunately.

Despite having a beautiful texture the meat was vile. It was acidic and putrid tasting. I bit again. It got up and started waddling away. I had half expected it to fight back but instead, it was just fleeing. It was perfect. I tried running after it but it was larger and faster than me. Clearly much older as after all I had only been born a day or so ago.

I couldn't keep up with it. So I kicked a rock at it. It hurt my foot a lot. I had almost forgotten that I wasn't wearing any shoes and I had kicked a rock almost the size of my foot with all of my strength. Obviously, the rock missed. I tried again and hit it on the head. Not that I could really hit it anywhere else. If we had bodies they were very small. Perhaps I did have arms just they were very small? I doubted it as I would be able to feel and move them. There might be vestidual remnants like in whales perhaps. I wasn't sure.

The rock seemed to have knocked it out or at least knocked it over. I waddled towards it and reached it just before it could get up. It was struggling to get back on its feet due to its stupid body shape. Which was also my own body shape.

I bit it again and then again. I started tearing meat off bit by bit until I got to my first organ. They were the lungs. It seemed that the body and head had almost fused as the region where the neck usually would sit instead had the entire body. With the region behind the jaws and other parts of the body containing most of it. And surely enough I pierced the lung and heard a voice.

"YOU HAVE GAINED 10XP FROM KILLING A PREGNANT FEMALE MONADA. DUE TO THE PREGNANCY, YOU HAVE CAUSED 10 KILLS OF BABY MONADAS. YOU WILL GAIN 2XP FROM EACH...YOU HAVE GAINED 30XP IN TOTAL... YOU HAVE LEVELLED UP. YOU ARE NOW LEVEL 2. YOU HAVE GAINED ONE SKILL POINT TO INVEST. CHOSE A STAT TO INVEST IN."

"What stats are there?"

"YOU HAVE AN HP OF LV3, A SPEED OF LEVEL 1, A STRENGTH OF LEVEL 1, AND A MAGIC SKILL OF 0"