Sleeping had been a grave mistake.

I knew, even before I fully came back to my senses that something was deeply and terribly wrong. The world around me felt horribly off, almost as if I had been moved to another location entirely while I slept.

As my vision came back I found that was exactly the case.

When I passed out earlier I had been trying to dig further back and away from the entrance, attempting to hide beneath the loosened dirt. Now I was somewhere close to where the tunnel began to slope upwards toward the surface, my body tucked behind a bunch of roots that had been too difficult for me to eat earlier. How had that even happened? It wasn’t like I could just move around in my sleep, right? I had stopped moving and passed out because I had run out of energy, so it didn’t make sense in the least for me to have had the capacity to move after falling asleep.

Still, I had gotten to where I currently was somehow, right? It was an unequivocal fact that I was now in a new location. I wasn’t just imagining the roots that hugged me on either side, pressing me against the wall of the tunnel. Something had moved me while I was out cold and apparently completely dead to the world, and that left me feeling sick and cold inside.

Why hadn’t it crushed me? Or swallowed me whole? Surely I was easy prey while I was out. If it had been me that had come across something that couldn’t put up a fight I would’ve surely made an attempt at eating it, so why hadn’t the thing that moved me made that same choice? Had it found me and shown a weird sort of mercy? And if so, what had prompted it to do so?

It all left me feeling confused and uneasy. Something had burrowed in with me while I was asleep, and somehow I hadn’t noticed at all. I had slept through the entire incident of being invaded, even being completely relocated to a place that felt pretty uncomfortable to be jammed into, and all without waking up for so much as a second. What kind of idiot was I? How stupidly carefree could I be to just nap my way through something like that?

Me being moved wasn’t the only thing that had apparently happened while I was out cold, either. My tunnel was wider than it had been before, the shape of it rougher and with plenty of loose dirt everywhere now. Whatever had come into the tunnel and moved me seemed to have also done some digging of its own, widening the walls and raising the ceiling. The shape wasn’t as round anymore either, with it being flatter on the bottom and having a more arched roof, it was also now wider than it was tall.

Whatever the thing was that had come in and done some unasked for renovations, it was much larger than I was. It left me feeling terrified. I needed to find a way to escape before it got back. Maybe I could tunnel in such a way that it couldn’t follow me? Maybe the roots would be too tough for it to dig or gnaw through the way they had been for me?

Before I could even turn my attention to that idea, however, I felt a tingling warmth rush all up and down my form in waves, the shock of it going straight to my center. I felt completely frozen to the spot and unable to act.

The invader was back.

While my body, or rather what I should more properly call my main body, was the red crystal currently lodged in the tangle of roots against the wall, it wasn’t all that existed of my body. I seemed to exist within the walls of my tunnel as well, though they didn’t have the same heightened senses as my main body did. I could see and feel things through every little bit of tunnel, but it was the crystal which most of my focus came from. Tendrils seemed to radiate off of this crystal, possibly dozens of invisible arms which I could use to drag my main body about. They were what I used to claw into the dirt when I dug, and their sensitivity to what they touched seemed to exist somewhere between what I felt from the walls and what I felt from the crystal itself.

So when I say that I could feel a tingling shock along my form as the invader returned, what I’m really saying is that I could feel the heat of something stepping into my very body, along with a strange prickling warmth that rushed along the tunnel walls before it finally reached the crystal where my consciousness seemed to emanate from.

Whatever the creature was that had expanded my tunnel, it seemed to be back, and it was much larger than even I had anticipated. The size of the tunnel had given me an idea, of course, but I hadn’t expected the creature to fill the entirety of it up.

Its body, thick and dark and covered with something rough, brushed against all sides of my tunnel as it stepped inside. Its eyes were small and dark, beady and wet looking, and as it opened its mouth to let out a puffing exhale I was able to see the sharp fangs that resided inside. It moved in a slow and lumbering way, body hunched and stout, powerful as it stalked forward on four legs. It had long claws, and looking at them it was easy to imagine them capable of punching right through my main body, shattering me in an instant.

I was too terrified to move, to even think about moving. All I could do was sit there in the roots and hope that it wouldn’t notice me, though the red light that shone from within me could be seen glittering in the depths of its pitch-black eyes.

The creature continued to move further inside, growing closer and closer to the crystal that made up what I truly considered to be my body. I couldn’t do anything but watch it, hoping that it wouldn’t turn its massive head and snap through the roots that held me like a prison. Its teeth and jaws looked as if they could easily make quick work of both me and the roots, tearing us both apart in a single bite.

My hopes proved to be in vain as the creature paused, head slowly turning to face me, its hot breath wet as it fanned across the crystal. For a moment I could see myself reflected in its eyes, and what I saw there made me sink into a bit of despair. I was so small, so insignificant and vulnerable. Why hadn’t it eaten me before? Why hadn’t it shattered me into a million bits while I slept? What had caused the thing to spare my life, and would it be so kind as to do so again?

A thousand horrified thoughts seemed to echo around inside of me all at once as it continued to stare in my direction, damp air billowing against me as its breath puffed out through its nose. Fear continued to build within me with each passing second that the invader didn’t act, and just as I thought that it couldn’t possibly grow any stronger than it already had? The creature stuck out its pink tongue and slurped a squirming white lump off of one of the roots that stretched across my body.

As if it hadn’t even noticed that I was there, as if I was truly so worthless that my existence didn’t even matter to it, it continued past me and further into the tunnel. Its thick claws tore into the back wall as it began to dig.

The sensation was strange and slightly unpleasant given that I was also the walls it was digging into, but it wasn’t actually painful in any way. It was, however, just an unusual enough sort of feeling that it seemed to snap me back into reality. The fear fell away and left me with only confusion.

What was the thing? Why was it here digging? And why was it paying me no mind at all?

Would the Dungeon Core like to use [Appraisal]?

The voice that was me and yet also wasn’t me spoke up, so loud in the tunnel that I instinctively turned my focus to the invader rather than the voice that would have otherwise commanded my full attention. The creature in question didn’t even seem to notice anything had been said, the rounded ears on the top of its head not even so much as twitching in my direction. Could it not hear anything, or was the weird voice something that only I could hear? There was only one way to find out for sure. It was time to be stupid.

I steeled myself in case of a sudden attack and focused on speaking back to the strange inner voice, the thing that spoke in my voice and yet seemed to be something outside of myself at the same time. I turned my thoughts inward to where it seemed to come from, and I thought very hard about wanting it to repeat itself.

Would the Dungeon Core like to use [Appraisal]?

The voice repeated its words in the exact same tone and inflection as before, without the slightest hint of life behind them at all. Once more I focused most of my attention on the strange creature that was steadily digging into the wall rather than on the weird voice that echoed out from inside of me. Once more I saw that the creature didn’t pay the least bit of attention to the sound, not so much as a flicker or twitch of its ears to acknowledge that it had heard a single thing.

Well, if it didn’t seem to hear the weird voice then maybe it wouldn’t notice if I used [Appraisal] on it? I could only hope, right? I was probably about to set a new personal record for stupidly brazen acts, but I couldn’t think of anything else to do. The same way as I had when using my [Tunneling] skill, I focused hard on the creature before me and on using [Appraisal].

[Badger] Lvl: 1

Status: Pregnant

HP: 150/150

SP: 168/200

The first thing I noticed was that [Appraisal] had a voice that was very similar to that of the inner voice but without the same odd sense of wrongness. It was loud and echoing, but it was also oddly warm and pleasant, almost as if it were a friend. The badger didn’t seem to hear the voice of [Appraisal] either, despite how much louder it had been than my inner voice. It seemed like the inner voice and [Appraisal] were both things that only I could hear.

[Appraisal] could also be seen, apparently, which I found to be impossibly strange. No matter where I looked or from what angle those words were right there before me, taking up my vision with an appearance so solid that it seemed like I should be able to touch them. [Appraisal] stayed there, overlaid across everything until I had the thought that I no longer wanted to look at it. The moment I decided I wanted it gone the list of stats simply disappeared as if they hadn’t existed at all.

Once [Appraisal] was no longer consuming my entire field of vision I was able to turn my attention back to the badger.

It felt a little silly that I hadn’t known before that it was a badger, because now that I was really looking at the invader it seemed instantly obvious that it was a badger. It looked exactly like one, after all, from the tip of its sharp little face to the end of its stubby little tail. Grayish fur all over, long claws, black and white stripes across the face, and small black eyes? Checkmarks all over. It ticked every single box to be a badger.

Had I even known what a badger was before? No, of course not. If I had known what a badger was then I would’ve been able to identify it as one before. It seemed as if, somehow, [Appraisal] was able to give me a vague impression of what something was supposed to be. Did I know everything about badgers all of a sudden? No, of course not! But I was aware now that badgers looked exactly like this, that they liked to dig, they liked eating bugs, and they lived in holes in the ground.

It was good enough for the moment. If I had more questions I could just ask later, right? Between [Appraisal] and that weird voice surely I could learn anything I needed to know.

Right now I had other things on my mind aside from the missing gaps in my knowledge, and it stemmed from one such missing gap. The badger had a status of pregnant, but I wasn’t exactly sure what pregnant meant. I tried focusing hard on that inner voice that seemed to have so many answers, but there was no response from it. I was left in silence that was only filled with the soft huffing and puffing of the badger as it continued to dig at the wall and kick dirt behind it.

If my weird inner voice was being quiet then I really only had one other option, right? I focused on the badger once more and called on [Appraisal].

[Badger] Lvl: 1

Status: Pregnant

HP: 150/150

SP: 154/200

Once more the warm voice of [Appraisal] rang out to fill the silence, and once more I found myself staring at a set of words that hovered everywhere in my vision all at once. I couldn’t be sure that it would work, but I had a vague idea and plenty of hope, so I had to give it a try. I focused my attention on the status, and I tried to use [Appraisal] on [Appraisal].

Pregnant. This status indicates that the creature in question is carrying children inside of it.

Surprise burst through me at those words. The badger was carrying around children? That were inside of it?! Somehow or another it had smaller, baby, badgers just… in it? How did that even work?!

It didn’t exactly look pregnant now that I was looking harder at it, but then again I had only just learned what being pregnant meant, and even that was only an impression. I had never seen anything that was pregnant before, let alone a pregnant badger! For all I knew it looked exactly the way it was supposed to! What was it even doing here? Did the fact it was digging into my tunnel mean that it was here in order to give birth? I wasn’t sure how to feel about that if it were the case. Should I try to run the thing off before it could do that?

I needed to come up with some sort of plan to get rid of the creature, but before I even began to get started on what would have surely been a masterful plot to do so, the badger suddenly stopped digging. It let out a huff and slowly turned around in the tunnel, facing the entrance once more. I wasn’t sure how to read the expressions or moods of a badger, but I somehow got the impression that it was satisfied with itself. Stomping its paws down to flatten the dirt beneath itself, the creature began making its way out of the tunnel, grunting and puffing the whole way as it did.

The moment it left the tunnel I found myself feeling oddly empty and cold. It was a strange sort of sensation, an odd kind of loneliness that caused me to stare out of the opening to the rest of the world with longing. I didn’t even know why I felt that way given I had spent the entire time it was in the tunnel either terrified of it or confused by it. It wasn’t so much that I wanted the badger itself to come back so much as it was that I just didn’t want to be alone again.

There it, or rather she, went. The badger trudged along as she went off into the night, her stout body disappearing into the tall grass, my last sight of her being her oddly cute little rump.

Had I really just thought that the creature that had invaded my tunnel was cute? Apparently so. It was entirely objective, however. It was just a fact that she was a bit on the cute side, that was all. It was all that fluff and the way her round little body sat wide and low to the ground. It wasn’t me being sentimental in the least bit. Why would I be? I had no reason to feel any affection for the beast.

Now that she was gone I should really take advantage of my time alone to begin planning how I could keep her out. Did I really want a bunch of badgers living inside of me? Sure, I had ended up liking the warmth, and sure, I felt oddly fuller now than I had been before but… Really? What kind of stupidity would it be to just let something live inside of me? I might have been an idiot, but I would have to be absolutely crazy to do something like that.

What I should really be doing is trying to figure out a way to trap and kill her, then I could eat her and get plenty of food. She was pretty large compared to me so she would probably fill me up rather nicely. She would make a pretty good meal, that much I was sure of, but I would need to be smart and clever if I wanted to eat her.

I needed to come up with a plan, and a good one at that. So far I seemed to be kind of dumb, so I needed to be careful and take my time to think things over. One way or another I would find a way to make a meal out of that badger.