Chapter 5 - Eating Dirt

She decided she should make a few workers and maybe a scout while she was in the forest because it would be the best place to grow undetected by human life until she was ready to go out.

The forest seemed like it lacked any form of human intervention— it had no signs of footsteps, no paths made, nothing that would give her a sign that humans were here.

Meaning it was most likely inhabitants or untouched by humans, which was great.

The animals in the forest wouldn't pose too much of a threat to her in her current stats— that is unless she came across either a pack of them or a strong animal.

But seeing as she hadn't seen a single animal during her walk her, she wasn't too worried.

She actually hoped she would be attacked by something.

Then she could devour it and take not only its mass, which she can use to make hive units or power herself up further, but also start learning their traits.

But with no animals currently available she made do with what she currently had, a lot of dirt, stone, and water.

While it wasn't as good as other materials— especially flesh— it was still mass, and would still attribute to the making of her hive.

It just wouldn't be very useful— but something was better than nothing.

'I wonder how it'll taste?'

She wasnt worried about the aftereffects of eating things such as dirt or stone, because unless the thing she ate was truly poisonous, her body would be able to break it down with no issue.

It was one of the perks that came with her body being the way it was. However, it didn't completely stop her from tasting how the thing she ate would taste to a member of her species.

Which made her curious.

So, scooping up a handful of dirt she placed it in her mouth and chewed, swallowing it. She didn't have to worry about any germs on it, and while she did feel weird eating dirt that was just laying around the forest, she knew it would help her grow.

So she ignored the human parts of her that lingered with thoughts of opposition.

Surprisingly it didn't taste terrible.

It wasnt any sort of quality meal— it didn't even taste good— it just didn't taste bad.

If there was one way she could describe it, it would be extremely salty.

Like very salty.

It tasted almost as if she was drinking seawater with how salty it was.

Wrinkling her lips a little at the taste, since she didn't like overly salty things— she decided to wash it down with some water.

Unsurprisingly water tasted the same as it always had, it wasnt like water had a flavor, to begin with.

She decided to next taste stone— which was a bit harder to do because of the texture of the stone.

It was hard— even the small peddles she found near the water were quite hard, and if it wasnt for her enhanced physical capabilities she wouldn't have been able to do what she wanted to do.

'I really hope I don't choke on these this. While I know that eating it wouldn't harm me from what my instincts are yelling, I can't help but doubt it. Maybe it's my human past talking.'

Ignoring her human commonsense of not putting a stone in her mouth, she did it anyways, and bit down on it hard.

It cracked instantly— thanks to her strength and durability that was both above the level of a human— adding to the power her teeth had.

The bits and pieces of it slipped down her throat as she swallowed it, hurting very slightly because of the rough texture it had going down her throat.

Its taste was odd to say the least. It taste somewhat like nothing, but had a taste of the same thing.

It was like eating ice— where it doesn't have a taste yet did.

'Definitely strange.'

She thought to herself as she finished it.

With that out of the way— she wanted to know how much a handful of dirt and a peddle the size of her nail would give her in mass— so she summoned her status.

Checking her mass on her status panel she saw she now had 2 points at mass— which meant that both either gave her 1 point each, or one gave her a decimal amount.

But she decided to go with the idea that it gave 1 each.

It wasnt a bad amount, to say the least, especially for being such a common material.

The only issue was that she intended to use 100 mass to make her first worker unit, which was the bare minimum she could do without it dying within days.

That meant she needed to eat a lot of dirt or stones for this to work.

Dirt was easier to eat so she decided to go with that for her main source of mass.

With a sigh, she started eating away at the dirt, not worrying about overfilling herself since her body would store it easily.

It took her about an hour to eat enough dirt to collect up a total of 100 points in mass, she also ate a few stones in between just to have some variety in the taste, but it was worth it in the end.

The only reason it even took an entire hour to eat so much dirt was because she took short breaks in between some in order to wash her mouth of the salty taste.

It got very disgusting very quickly with how much she was eating.

But she had finally done it— and just in time too because it was getting rather dark.

A worker could be useful for gathering in the dark or even distracting anything that tried to attack her.

'Finally have enough to create one, let's see how this works. I wonder how it feels.'

She instinctually knew how to make a hive unit— she just never tried it before so she had no idea how it would actually be.

How it would feel.