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Hunger
What does an earthworm eat?
Given the task of figuring out what the basic diet of a common annelid was something that I never entertained contemplating. I knew, perhaps, that there were individuals out in the world who possessed this knowledge. There were people who cultivated and grew worms for the purpose of aerating the soil or perhaps as bait for their fishing trips. I, unfortunately, was not amongst such individuals.
Hence, my answer followed deductive reasoning. They were not predators. I knew this for a fact because it would have been notable if they were, with news stations informing about worm bites and people referencing it. I did not believe they were capable of consuming meat or flesh. If one was not a carnivore, then they were clearly herbivores. Hence, I deduced that they thrived on eating leaves and other greenery.
Fruits, also, were a possibility. I could not count how many children books or cartoons I’d seen with the evocative image of a worm being found within a shiny red apple. I believed I had one such coloring book in my prepubescent days.
[Intelligence has risen by 0.1]
I desperately wished I possessed the ability to scoff. For goodness sakes, deducing that a worm ate fruits and leaves was not worthy of an increase in my base intelligence. A child could have accomplished such a feat.
Ah, but I suppose a worm could not have. A worm was clearly dumber than a child after all. Regardless, I needed to attain more information about the basic nature of my abilities. I started immediately with the ‘titles’ I had attained.
Title: [Reincarnated]
Details: A unique title. As a reincarnated being, you are granted access to select skills, memories and knowledge of your past life.
Indeed, it seemed to provide me with nothing other than telling me what I was. I mentally commanded the information to dissipate, and focused on my second title.
Title: [User]
Details: A unique title. Grants the ability to attain the specialties of any being or object the “User” has conquered, dominated and/or consumed.
The ability to attain the specialties of any being or object I conquered, dominated or consumed? That was... vague. What exactly entailed in the act of conquering and dominating? Lying flat upon leaf could be construed as ‘dominating’ it. Conquering, indeed, was perhaps significantly vaguer. Conquer, in the manner that armies overtook nations, or conquer, in the manner that men did women within the bedroom?
[Warning!]
You are suffering from the Negative Effect: [Starved]
You will lose [0.1] HP Every Hour until [Starved] is mitigated.
I calculated. I possessed a meager 5 Health Points, if I lost 0.1 HP every hour, then in fifty hours, or, two days and two hours, I would die from starvation. However, because I regained 0.5HP every twenty four hours, I had an extra ten hours added to that, which brought my total up to sixty hours, or two and a half days.
This worked under the assumption that the traditional “0 HP Equals Death” rule that seemed to be prominent amongst videogame media of all types. If so, I possessed exactly two and a half days to find food and eat – or I would die.
This was problematic.
I needed to find leaves, fruit, or other greenery in the next sixty hours. This was a difficult task when I had no eyes to see, nor ears to hear. I knew not how a worm was capable of navigation if they could neither see nor hear. Surely this was not how they existed, perceived the world, blind and incapable of perceiving auditory information? Evolution was not so unforgiving to have allowed such a being to exist and thrive for millions upon millions of years if such was the case.
No, a worm, most likely, was capable of some way of perceiving the world. As I could feel the earth beneath me, I could sense the moistness of the soil, I knew that I was capable of feeling tactile sensations. My sense of touch was nowhere near as complex as it should have been, but it existed, it existed and in its own way... it was... acute.
Boom.
When I focused, truly, unmoving and still, I could feel the soil beneath me shake. Tremble. It was almost unnoticeable, but the stiller I stayed, the more I could... feel the earth.
Boom.
There was something, dropping unto the ground. Heavy, large.
Boom.
When it landed, it split, separated, creating smaller, tinier versions which created even smaller, tinier vibrations. Almost as if – almost as if it was –
Boom.
A droplet.
[Skill {Vibration Sensing} has gained a Level.]
[Skill {Vibration Sensing Lv. 2} acquired]
My world exploded in a cacophony of ambiances. Different, echoing, countless tiny objects that I could now feel around me. There was a droplet of water, landing, intermittently, ahead of me. The soil around me, everywhere, as far as I could sense, resonated with the sensation of microscopic organisms. I contemplated how I knew they were microscopic, but no answers were forthcoming. I just knew.
I could not see, no, not truly, but I could sense the world. I could sense the word via vibrations.
Worms could sense the world around them via vibrations on the soil.
Of course. Worms were creatures of the earth to begin with – this – this was how they navigated, this was how they knew what was ahead of them and what was not. Blind, they sensed vibrations across the soil with their body, and they reacted, moving in response.
It reminded me of the days in my youth when I enjoyed a series about the elements and individuals who molded the elements to their wills. Those attuned with earth could sense the vibrations on the floor to pin-point precision levels of detecting heartbeats. What I could do was clearly nowhere near the levels of that fictitious ability... however, I set up that image as my eventual goal. Reincarnation had been nothing but a fictitious, unproven event once upon a time... I could no longer act as though the word ‘fiction’ had any true meaning.
Basking in the success of being able to ‘see’ around me, I immediately planned my next task, which was to find food.
Being able to sense vibrations aided in navigation, but it was unlikely that it possessed any practical use in finding meals, as worms were neither hunters nor predators. So there had to be another sense... a sense that enabled them to perceive their food and then move in the general direction of it.
Evolutionarily speaking, the most appropriate ‘sense’ for this task would be the sense sight. However, as a worm lacked that, the next most appropriate would be that of ‘smell.’ I already knew that I possessed no nostrils, but, it was entirely possible that worms could smell using another organ.
So I focused.
Smell. Smell. Smell.
...
Nothing. No reaction. No matter how much I tried to ‘smell,’ I could not compare my previous ability to perceive smells as a human to that of a worm. Truly, I doubted if worms were indeed capable of smelling at all.
Then how? I pondered. How does a worm find food?
In the end, I decided that it mattered little. It mattered little how a worm did things, because I was not a worm. I had the knowledge and experiences of a human being, and that would certainly be more than enough to make up for the deficiencies that I could not fathom in my biology.
There were currently sixty hours before I would die of starvation. To prevent that, I needed to be well-equipped to begin my search for food. If one was giving eight hours to cut down a tree, one needed to spend seven hours sharpening their axe. People feared not the man who had practiced a thousand kicks once, but the man who had practiced one kick a thousand times.
This was the mantra I forced myself to believe, as I began the admittedly degrading task pf crawling in circles.
I’m training. Yes, yes, it was training. Crawling forward, inch by inch, around and around and around in circles, this was my strategy to improve my ability to crawl. Improving my movement would be crucial to avoid or evade predators, which were a more formidable threat to ending my existence than mere starvation.
So around and around and around I go.
I knew I would look back at this moment and laugh. I knew.
Admittedly, right now, crawling in circles was not amusing. This will be funny in five years’ time. It will be funny. It will be amusing, and I will laugh. Yes, in time, this would all be humorous. This would be humorous.
