On day 9 I awoke to my growling stomach. Well if it could growl, it would have because I felt it rumbling as I woke. It made noises, almost like it could speak to me.
'Oh dear master, my snail overlord.' It said. 'Please feed me, you can't starve me any more than this...'
'Oh dear stomach, my beautiful best friend. I can't find any food. We will reach the promise lands soon and I'll fill you up. I promise my son. For I am your friend, your brother and your father, please hang in there. I can't survive without you my love.' I replied to it in my mind.
Yes. I was beginning to lose my mind. The hunger and fatigue was affecting me mentally. I was loopy.
'I hope it is soon master.' It replied.
Just as I was about to reply to it once more, I felt something scrape along the outside of my shell and across my exposed foot. It felt weird. It paused for a moment and then I felt it nibble parts of my foot. It tickled... until it bit me hard.
The pain snapped me out of my delusion.
I poked my head out of my shell to look around. There was nothing around but my siblings. But 7 was surprisingly close to me.
'He wouldn't eat me right? I mean I must be delicious and fatty, but still. I mean I would love to take a bite out of my...' I thought to myself as I shook my eye stalks. The thought of food was stuck in my mind.
I immediately I banged my head against the tree bark. 'Focus' I told myself.
I looked into the distance at the two paths that branched before me. One path lead down a thick branch. 'It would probably lead us to the trunk of the tree.' I thought.
Then I looked at over at the other branch. It was a small branch. 'If we go down that one we could probably find some leaves. Okay, we will go down that branch I thought.'
Slowly I slid around my siblings to wake them up and check on them.
434 shells.
Somehow in the night we had lost another brother or sister. I slid around the shells of my siblings to investigate. My siblings who had woken up all had drooping eye stalks. Every snail except a few. This included 7, who seemed to be larger than he was the day before and full of energy. 'Weird, could 7 have fulfilled his prophecy and 8...9?'
Desperately I looked around for the pattern and shape of 9's shell. A layer of cold sweat... cold mucous flowed down my head while I thought about the possibility that my brother 7 was a cannibal.
Clearly I disregarded my thoughts the previous day where I wanted to eat them as well. I also ignored the fact that I just thought about how delicious I would be if I could eat myself.
After a minute I found 9. He was...
Alive.
'Thank the heavens!' I thought. '7 isn't a cannibal.'
In a moment of relief I completely forgot about the fact that one of my siblings had disappeared over the night. Instead, I thought about the buffet that was placed before me '434 delicious siblings left'. I thought as I looked at my siblings who were waking up, before I banged my head against the bark once more 'No! Control. Focus.'.
After an hour, I started moving onto the thin branch ahead of me. Like the days before, my siblings followed.
In the distance, I could faintly see areas that were green. 'We will probably need two days to reach the leaf. Hopefully we can find something to eat before then so we don't starve ourselves to death before we get there.' I thought to myself.
...
As time passed, I got hungrier. My speed slowed down dramatically from they day before. Either I was getting slower or I was getting fatter. It was clearly the latter. I carried more and more siblings that day inside my stomach. I'm kidding. I carried more and more of them on my shell. Did you think I was a cannibal like 7?
...
We were a tight knit family. As the day progressed, more and more of my smaller siblings hitched a ride on my shell. In fact, there were those that started to settle on 7's back as well.
It would have been good for strength training as I was literally taking a prolonged marathon with heavy weights on my back like a body builder at the gym.
To be honest I'm getting tired of these unknown words too... I mean what is a gym? All I know is Jim, my brother snail.
...
As the day progressed I got hungrier and my tiredness grew as well. To make it all worse, my stomach begun to talk to me more and more often.
'Eat your siblings. Go do it. They are delicious!' said my stomach.
'No!' I replied. 'I'm a good big brother. I'm the best snail-bro. I won't.'
My stomach was like a mosquito or the buzzing of a fly that was always next to my ear, if I had ears... It was extremely annoying. Slowly I got more annoyed, angry and hungry. I got annoy-hangrier.
Soon I began to question the voice. I wasn't sure if I was delusional or if my stomach was really speaking to me.
...
Huff. Huff. I panted through my gills as hours had gone by and my vision had begun to blur. Through my blurred vision, I remembered seeing a few black looking lumps appear. They walked alongside us and seemed to join our snail migration for some odd reason.
As the day went on, my pace began to slow down even more. I think at that point the hunger was getting to us all and not just me.
Soon, I began to feel nibbling at my foot once more. Just like the one from this morning. I turned my eye stalks around and I was met with two black sticks that poked at my body. Attached to the black sticks were three bulb like spheres and six other sticks that were attached to the center sphere.
'I must be hallucinating.' I thought and slid on. But as I moved, it followed me and kept poking at my flesh with its two sticks. "Stop!" I said to it. But it didn't move. Instead, it bit me with a set of jaws that I couldn't see before as my vision had blurred.
"Stop!" I yelled. But it didn't. Well it's not like it heard me or anything... but still.
I turned around and whacked it with my eye stalks. Yes I gave it a good whooping as I taught it not to mess with a snail. I hit it so hard that if flew off the branch into the abyss below. Normally I would be celebrating my strength with a hearty laugh and gloat, but I wasn't myself.
Because "You're not you when you're hungry." - Snickers Chocolate Bar slogan
O.O
Should I snicker at that free advertisement?
...
'Good riddens.' I thought as I continued to slide down the branch.
Oh if only I knew.
Behind me, many more creatures were pulling and nibbling at my siblings who had fallen slightly behind from the group. Working together, the creatures had already dragged off the weakest among them.
I didn't realize it at the time that ants of all things were carrying my siblings away to their nest okay? Don't say I'm a bad brother. Consider my condition first. I was only a wee small snail who was 9 days old.
...
Soon more and more creatures appeared and started to bite at me as well. I stopped at this time. It was getting annoying and it hurt. I felt my anger rise to a new high as I turned to one of the dark creatures and yelled out "How you do like it if I kept on biting you?" as I slid my entire body and radula over their bodies like I was munching on a leaf.
I didn't remember a lot of what happened after that. It was like I instantly lost control and my mind as parts of its body entered through my mouth and into my stomach as I crushed its body under mine.
'Meat. Thank you kind master.' My stomach chirped as it was slightly satiated.
"Meat! Nice to meet you. Thanks for being food."
And I blacked out...
Summary of Day 9: Dark creatures poked me with sticks and I blacked out after biting one.
+ 2 strength
[Mutation: Gluttonous] (Satiated)
+ 1 strength
+ 1 size
[Title gained: Insectivore]
[Reached: Lvl 2]
+ 1 all unlocked stats
+ 1 skill point
[Action: Level Up skill] (Unlocked)
/*** Refer to API: Actions(); ***/
[Quest: Let's get to level 2!] (Completed)
Rewards:
+ 10 exp
[Quest initiated: Let's get to level 5!]
[Quest: The Great Snail Migration] (Updated)
Days: 3
Snails: 399
Fatalities: 38