“ow.”

Hubris, thy name is mantis.

Right now I was lying on my back in a pile of dead leaves feeling very, very stupid. Just because I could beat up newborns of my own species doesn’t mean I can take on beetles the size of monster trucks, even if they were only that large relatively speaking. Even if I have crazy magic morphing powers I’m not necessarily stronger than other things. I got cocky, simple as that.

My thorax was cracked, It had an ugly crater of shattered exoskeleton right in the center. I really didn’t want to take a hit like that again. I flipped onto my feet and stretched experimentally. Yup, that smarts. I was lucky I had a hard shell and light body, otherwise I would have pancaked on the forest floor.

There was no way I was going to walk around with a boss monster style weak point, I needed to get this covered up fast. I tried using my shifting powers to seal the cracks, pushing the edges together and sealing them.

*crick crick*

The crack was quick to respond, pulling together into a raised scar on my armor, with a little mental welding I fixed it as best I could. It hurt quite a bit, but I preferred the pain to living with a hole in my chest. After mentally relaxing, I saw the fix was holding up fine, leaving me with a wicked looking scar.

Eh, I suppose that’ll have to do. I glared up at the tree. I definitely would remember this, I wasn’t going to underestimate my enemy again. I am a bug, but I was going to be the king of beasts. By hook or by crook, I would dominate this forest and everything in it.

As I made my resolution a towering elk walked by. the sweeping rack of antlers were a dark golden amber covered in points and it’s thick fur was a rich chocolate brown. deep eyes surveyed the land as it stepped over me. I didn’t even come halfway up its hoof.

...King of insects, yup that’s what I meant.

As the hooves of the elk swept overhead and came down it disturbed the fallen leaves, what caught my attention is that one part of the leaf litter moved before the hoof came down. Not moving to match the breeze, the leaf looked quite peculiar. I moved slowly to approach it and when I drew near I recognized it.

It’s a cockroach… On the one claw I was even hungrier after fixing up my gaping chest wound… On the other, eating a cockroach isn’t exactly an appetizing proposition.

Oh well, beggars can’t be choosers. I had to eat something after all. When I got close enough I used the same move I had tried on the beetle.

*splitch*

“Okay that worked much better.”

It worked perfectly in fact, the roach was skewered with ease and my claws actually shoved through to the other side. I began eating right away. I wonder why I’m not more squeamish about this whole business? Right away I noticed that the ache I had in my thorax disappeared, I hadn’t noticed it was there till it was gone. The scar was still there but it looked less nasty and puckered, it was more of a discoloration now. The mark looked a bit like a face. Not much though.

I decided to keep hunting these roaches. They were a lot easier to kill and more importantly, now that I knew what to look for, there were quite a few to be found. Of course hunting in the leaf litter meant I would need a costume change. It looks like this year’s fashion is dead leaves. I could hide the scar as well which was good, I had been worried about that.

Now that I was literally dressed to kill it was time to start hunting. I was going to eat everything I could.

and I did.

Roaches? Eaten.

Grubs? Eaten.

Millipedes? Eaten.

Earthworms? Eaten.

Ground beetles? Eaten.

Spiders? Eaten.

Cicadas? Eaten.

Crickets? Eaten.

Woodlice? Eaten.

Centipedes? Eaten.

Harvestmen? Eaten.

Weevils? Eaten.

Scorpions? Eaten.

By the time the sun set I had eaten innumerable amounts of creatures. I devoured everything I could catch, Scouring the forest floor for anything that moved. I don’t have a clue where all the mass went, I didn’t grow nearly enough to account for the endless swarm I had consumed. That isn’t to say I hadn’t grown, in fact I had even grown big enough to eat the occasional rodent that I saw scurrying by.

With the massive numbers I had eaten I was much larger than before and more experienced in hunting. I was playing it safe, trying not to get spotted by anything bigger than me, but even so I had improved my skills and could find and catch food much quicker and more subtly.

The strangest thing was I would occasionally eat an insect that was obviously not the same as the others of it’s species, possessing some strange trait that made it unique. there was one cricket covered in spikes. They didn’t do much to stop me killing him although it made eating the prickly fellow a bit awkward. I nearly lost a leg to an armored ground beetle with extra large bolt cutter jaws. Piercing and removing its shell took quite a long time but it was extra satisfying.

There were also plenty of species that I couldn’t identify. I wasn’t sure whether it was because they didn’t exist on earth or I simply didn’t know about them.

Pausing in my slaughter I took in the view of the forest, it looked quite different at night. the moonlight gave the woods an ethereal air. The creatures of the day went to sleep and the night awoke. the omnipresent sound of buzzing bees and birdsong was replaced with crickets, frogs and owls. bats fluttered overhead and moths replaced the bees in tending the flowers.

Well, I can still see and I’m not full yet so… let’s keep going. I was going to have to look for bigger food though. The bugs I had been eating recently were no longer much of a meal. Let’s try bat for a change.

I changed my camouflage once again, returning to the tree bark look, and made my way up a tree with a decent number of flowers. The way I see it, the flowers will attract moths and the moths will attract bats. I suppose the bats are attracting me. I better be careful that I don’t attract anything.

I ran up the tree and selected a branch halfway to the top. clinging to the end I stuck out in the middle of the air and waited for a bat to pass by. My arms were shifted for grabbing, I covered them in barbed spines. with my new size I had a decent reach, I was fairly confident in my lone branch impression as well.

The space between the trees was relatively narrow, Still it let the moonlight through and left plenty of room for flyers. However in certain spots there were natural choke points where anything big enough flying would have to pass through. I had picked one of these for my ambushes. This particular checkpoint would have a pretty hefty toll.

The result? An endless buffet. I would wait for one to fly by, snag it, bring it back into the shelter of the leaves, eat and repeat. This was much faster than eating little bugs. Of course if I had tried this a couple hours ago I would have become the meal rather than the other way round.

A dinner in the moonlight is quite nice once in awhile.

I do have to say, real meat is so much better than insects. Even uncooked it tastes pretty amazing, not to say I would turn down cooked meat. My body seems to have a different sense of taste, it’s probably the reason I could stomach all the things I’ve eaten up till now. I even find myself enjoying the texture of raw flesh and the crunch of bone or exoskeleton.

I wonder if I’m carnivorous now? I never did think much of veggies so it’s no real big loss.

Good food is justice.

I got into a rhythm again and ate all night. I was really being a glutton here, but it’s for the sake of strengthening myself so don’t judge me. No matter how much I eat I’m not getting fat. But it’s not like I was that chubby as a human...

I mean, I was a bit thickset but not that bad…

...well anyway, I wonder what I should eat next? I’ve gotten a bit bigger than the bats I’ve been eating.

Bigger not fatter.

Stop looking at me like that.