"This isn't as bad as I thought." Penta thought to himself.
He was holding a slightly darker shade of black dirt that was a part of the tunnel he recently dug and found himself feeling lucky. The roach brain was apt at survival, but even Penta didn't know that these lands demanded so much of these poor creatures.
He had started eating the dirt around him with no other choice in mind than death by Hell beetle. He started focusing on not tasting the dirt as he swallowed it all but to his surprise it was really easy.
The roach was able to tolerate the bland taste and was able to eat it.
Penta was on a few days of his new diet when he discovered another surprise. There were some parts of dirt that felt better eating than others. It wasn't a question of taste but more of a bodily reaction to eating it. He didn't know if it was bad or not but he felt his body wouldn't react this way for no reason.
Of course, he also thought of the possibility of dying due to it being some poison that lies to your senses but already eating dirt hadn't killed him and he wasn't passing up any chances he would get.
This different material he found was quickly named "Better dirt" by Penta. He was already eating dirt. He had no lower to go than this, he lost all care about anything but eating dirt and growing. He needed power. Whatever way he would get it, and if being so piss poor he had to eat dirt to do it, he was going to do it.
Motivation sometimes comes from the weirdest of places but Penta's situation was not your typical one and it showed his willpower already for the level of tenacity he had.
"Oho... Jackpot! Hahahaha!" Penta screeched in excitement as his back legs wiped his butt and his two front-most legs were rubbing each other in an exciting matter. The walls around Penta were filled with nothing else but "Better dirt". It was as though he had reached a deeper level of the surface in which the planet gave more importance than the surface.
Seeing a roach rubbing its hands, one must know a plot was a-brewing.
"My precious..." Penta joked as he started ravaging the "Better dirt" for lack of trying for a "Better name".
The days of eating the "Better dirt" made Penta feel like an emperor for the first time. The energizing feeling he got from eating "Better dirt" made his previous days seem more worthwhile as if the universe still gave him a way out of this hellhole.
The energizing feeling was an odd one but not too different from absorbing his sibling's energy. It just felt calmer and less invasive on his body. He spread the energy about his body as equally as possible when he rested after eating and digging large amounts.
The annoying problem came after a few weeks of engorging himself and shitting left and right was even worse dirt than "ordinary dirt" as anything of good within it was taken for Penta's sole use.
However, even he didn't realize that he had grown much larger with a purple like chitin armor growing all over him. The armor was produced in itself from hardening the bodies glucose like substance. It was a natural process that was great but the amount of energy it took affected his bodily growth.
Penta was now sitting close to a meter in size and in a large yet comfortable hall like area. He had opened himself a vast nest but now he was stuck inside of it and would have to dig back to get to the surface.
"Should I try my luck on the surface or just keep eating?" Penta was a little lost as he knew he would keep growing stronger if he just kept eating here but he felt that he wasn't making any real progress aside from eating his days away. He was a young roach but even they had a very limited lifespan.
He started seriously considering what his next step was but an idea immediately came to mind. He didn't know how much of his memories were lost but luckily for him, quite a bit was still saved.
"Ores..." Fastest way Penta thought he could abuse his skill for dirt was to find stronger materials and eat them. It wasn't a genius idea but it was the best his situation could work with considering the lack of crap on the surface.
" I wonder what the Hell Beetle eats," Penta mumbled as he started digging straight down. He wasn't curving for anything anymore. He figured the deeper he went the better the results considering rarer minerals are usually formed through the pressure situated closer to the bottom.
He still kept eating and shitting as he went down and creating small pockets for his shits considering his new size but the process was slightly faster as his chitin armor was capable of enduring the stronger compressed dirt blocking him from his minerals.
A day had passed as the journey to "the underworld" continued as per Penta's knack for naming continued shining in the darkened tunnels. He didn't know how big this place was or how shitty of a location he chose to start digging but he continued as nothing else would help him.
His efforts were eventually rewarded as he saw a mineral he could only assume was glowing green ever so slightly. It was a tiny bit but he knew this was what he was after.
"I might get luckier and find a vein of it hehe." Penta mused as he smiled as roach-like possible.
He held the tiny piece of green rock in front of him and considered what it was before giving up as he had no idea what it did. "Bottoms up." He thought as he started chewing the green rock with dirt to wash it down.
He focused on the sensation the green rock would give the best he could. The rock was destroyed into a mineral-like form which then was mixed with "Better dirt".
"Hmmm...ARGHHHH!!!" As he waited to digest a pain so acute and sharp, one of which he hasn't felt in the week or so he had been digging started attacking the fibers that made his muscles.
"What the hell is this!??" Penta screeched with a slight whimper to his usual tone. The pain was intense but short-lived. He was gasping for a moment before his roach body adapted. The sensation was like needles. He had no confirmation of what the rock had done to him aside from cause him pain.
"It must be doing something as my body feels fine now, maybe I should just keep eating it as I don't feel any danger to my life," Penta mumbled in screech form. He considered everything from every angle but his large human soul, though shrunken from its original size, was still far superior then the roach. The emperor roach wasn't that big of an exception considering he had a feeling it was still low tier even with the title. His soul didn't feel threatened though his body hurt for a little bit.
"Might as well continue, no pain no gain." He told himself one of the more cliche lines he still remembered and kept finding more green rock.
The green rocks were actually near a small mineral vein which got Penta's hopes up as he saw the one-meter size piece of rock with a slight green glow.
"Hopefully the pain lessens over time," Penta thought as he started focusing on trying not to feel the pain as he ate the pieces of green rock with dirt.
The whole process was smoothly executed in the most agonizing way.
Each grain of green rock that was smashed was eventually absorbed and with periodic intervals of consumption, Penta noticed the peculiarities of the green rock. It was attaching itself to his muscle fibers. This was where the pain came from as he felt his muscles, fibers, and tendons get pricked by tiny little sharp green rock minerals.
The effects themselves weren't apparent as this rock wouldn't just give superpowers, but Penta knew there must be some benefit to having these minerals attach themselves to him.
With getting as much of this rock inside him as the goal, Penta continued to suffer through periodic bursts of short-lived but agonizing pain.