I find myself in a dark room, not strange considering I had fallen asleep at 3pm yesterday after staying up all night binging Project Lain for the third time. But what was slightly strange was the wall of text hovering in front of me, it didn’t look like it was emitting light, considering I couldn’t see any of my room.

  Had I left my laptop screen on by accident?

  But I quickly discarded that guess when I read the text.

  “Congrats on being chosen, Jacob, for ‘THE GREAT DEBATE’ by your homeworld's goddess, Terra.”

  OH ssshhhiiiitittt, was this an isekai? That was just so boring. I couldn’t have been put in a more fun genre, like cyberpunk or something, Terra, or whatever your name is. Oh, and Earth has a goddess? And what do you mean by Homeworld? That leaves a lot of implications and questions unanswered over here, System, or whatever you are.

  My line of thought was interrupted when the text abruptly changed.

  “Move and break free now, Jacob.”

  What was that supposed to mean? I guess I could be trapped in something, that would explain the darkness. Wait a minute, now that I think about it, this could just be a hallucination.

  I heard a ding and the message flashed.

  Alright, alright, I get it.

  I moved my body, and I realized for the first time that my body felt weird as hell, nothing seemed to be in the right place. And all the senses I had were just wonky, like my nose and eyes were shifted all around and ever so different.

  This only made me freak out more and move around, which coincidentally broke through whatever was holding me. The light poured through, allowing me to see what was holding me.

  A cocoon? Oh no, had I transformed into a monster of some kind? And with the cocoon, I was probably some sort of bug, ew, just ew. Dear Terra, why couldn’t have you just made me a majestic bird? I would even settle for a Penguin, please.

  Whenever a bug crawled into my room, or just the house in general, I had my brother remove it. It was the only thing that had gotten me to clean on a regular basis when I was younger, and now I was one!

  Well, I wonder how Boe, my brother, is doing now. Wait, what else was I thinking about? Oh, right, I'm a bug now, no, stop doing that, brain! Ok, Jacob, chill, just chill.

  I tried to breathe to calm myself, but I couldn’t, on account of being a bug who breathed through a million little pores all over my body. Then I saw my creepy bug legs, and the whole freaking out process started again.

  I heard a ding and the message “Move and break free now, Jacob.” flashed again.

  That helped me distract myself long enough to calm down and crawl out of the cocoon, my vision was pixelated and blurry. But my smell was almost overwhelming, like I had walked into a scented candle shop, but it helped me tell where I was.

  It was damp and chilly, smelling of fallen leaves and dirt. I was buried beneath a small pile of leaves. I crawled out, and I started instinctively unfurling my wings. It felt like I was… pumping blood into them? Kind of like how it feels when your arm falls asleep after sleeping on it, and it’s all tingly.

  Huh, the wings and the cocoon probably meant I was a Butterfly or a Moth, well, at least those were pretty bugs. Not ants, or spiders, I probably would’ve embraced the sweet release of Death if I were one of those.

  Then I had a thought, I willed a system interface to pop up, and it did, the first line made all my efforts for not, but at least it confirmed my guess.

  Species: Lunar Scale Moth

  Level 0/10 till Evolution

  Antenna: Basic

  Wings: Basic

  Tarsus: Basic

  Abdomen: Basic

  HP: Green

  Lv: 1

  MP: Green

  Lv: 6

  EP: Green (Days to live 7/7)

  Lv: 3

  Core Skills: 2/5

  Lunar Scale Dust

  LV 0/3

  0/1

  Moon Silk

  LV 0/3

  Locked

  Locked

  Locked

  Gained Skills: 0/3

  Ok, ok, good information, but dear, great, venerable System. What the fuck does “Days to Live” mean! Well, it’s obvious, but why is it there?! Ok, calm down, this won’t do anything. What can I conclude? The first oddity is that the “Days to Live” is right next to the “EP”.

  I don’t know for sure what EP meant, but it probably was something like Energy Points, and if I’m remembering correctly, some bugs only lived for a few short days when they reached adulthood. Because they lost their mouths and were subsisting on all the energy reserves they gained during infancy, larvacy? It didn’t matter, what did matter was how the hell I would, you know, not die.

  Then I saw a shadow fly over me, my bug instincts kicked in, and I crawled under the leaf litter, my wings not having been fully inflated yet. The next moment, something landed on the ground just a few feet, inches? Away from me, I couldn’t see it, but it smelled like a bird with a beautiful brown color, and my little insect brain went into full panic.

  I stood stock still as it pecked the ground in a circular motion, with me in the direct path, and I was still as a brick despite knowing that.

  What was I doing, move you stupid bug legs! But my instincts didn’t comply, so I took them by the antenna and shook it like an abusive parent, forcing myself to crawl towards the bird. Not away, the bird would just hop forward, and I would be in its path again.

  Then the bird pecked right where I was a moment ago. It felt like an eternity as it lifted its head again and pecked once more. I laid still in fright, waiting for it to move, then I smelled a squeal of pheromones.

  The bird had picked up a bug. I recognized the pheromones belonging to my species, probably the same brood. I was reminded of Boe when I saw the bug being eaten. I mentally shook my head.

  Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

  Why’re you thinking about that? You’re kind of in a life or death situation right now, Jacob. And why am I thinking in third person? Ah, doesn’t matter.

  The bird hopped over me, every moment stretching into an eternity as it did, praying that it didn’t accidentally crush me. And I waited longer till it hopped farther away, making my escape slowly under the leaf litter, only crawling back into the sunlight when I found a secluded crevice to surface. And as I popped out, another ding from the system came, and a pop up appeared in my vision.

  Weird, I can see the system perfectly fine, but everything else looks so grainy.

  “Congratulations, you’ve fulfilled the condition to gain the skill ‘Stealth’, would you like to accept? Yes or no.”

  Yes, yes, yes!

  I’ve never so enthusiastically mentally pressed an accept button in my life, then I pulled up my gained skills sheet.

  Gained Skills: 1/3

  Stealth

  LV 0/5

  I was slightly distraught by the Gained Skills counter going up, my hope and dreams vanquished, but I had expected it to. Though my annoyance was heavily outweighed by having some sort of help in case a situation like that with the bird happened again. Then my attention was drawn to something a little more interesting to me.

  Core Skills: 2/5

  Lunar Scale Dust

  LV 0/3

  0/1

  Moon Silk

  LV 0/3

  Locked

  Locked

  Locked

  I could barely tell what they even did. I tried to get good old System-chan to tell me, ha, made you cringe. Who am I even talking to? But back to the point, the System yielded no results, all I had were their names.

  Moon Silk was probably… well, silk for me to use, and Lunar Scale Dust was probably dust released from my wings. What did the counter below it mean… charges? But honestly, I had no idea. All I could do was activate them, and conveniently, my wings had finished inflating while thinking about this.

  I mentally squeal in excitement. I'd never flown before, not even on an airplane, that's why I'd always loved birds. The flying, not the airplane. They just seemed so free up there, they could go anywhere any time, but I could cope with doing it while being a bug. The pros outweighed the cons.

  I spread my wings out, the motion feeling even more alien than the rest of my body, and I flapped once hesitantly. Then again, and soon I was in the air, flailing around wildly, my Human instincts and my Moth instincts warring. One telling my body how to move, the other screaming incoherently.

  Hey, what is that in front of me?

  I then flew, face first into a wall and hit the ground a few inches below, it surprisingly didn’t hurt.

  Well, I was a flying bug, it would be kinda dumb for evolution not to give me that ability. I stood up, my human instinct currently curled up in the fetal position, while my bug instincts called them a big baby. For once, I agreed with my bug self, though don’t get too comfortable, this is a tentative alliance, Bug Jacob.

  I once again tried flight, suppressing my human instincts and allowing my bug instincts to take over, flying around and sniffing the air with my antenna. Looking for pheromones in the air, and putting out my own pheromones.

  Oh, ew, ew, ew, ew, my bug self was looking to mate. I did not want to know what bug sex looked like! I suppressed my bug instincts, but consequently, my human half took over.

  Screaming again, I started a death spiral, but I let my inner bug guide me again, and I was flying like a regular moth. Which admittedly didn’t look much different from a death spiral, but the elegance of a moth in flight would escape most, I suppose.

  I then spent the next few minutes finding a tentative balance between my bug and human, making sure I could fly, but wouldn’t be doing the moth equivalent of a ‘U up’ message. I was also spending time trying to find a way not to die in a week, my best guess was leveling. It was right below my species, it said

  Level 0/10 till Evolution

  So my best chance of surviving past the week was Evolving into something that actually had a mouth.

  Then, below me, I spotted the scent of a bird. I consciously decided to make a tight U-turn away from it. But my bug part was still mostly in control, and it… flew towards it.

  Um, excuse me, Bug half, yeah, our alliance is off, uh, why? Because you’re doing your best impression of a Japanese WW2 pilot while I'm still in the plane, that’s why!

  I desperately tried to turn around, but I was already just above it, and the bird looked up, it opened its wings to fly, and I widened mine. And sparkling dust drifted out of my wings and dropped onto the bird, and the bird… lowered its wings? Then it was just standing there while I circled above it.

  Wait a minute…

  I opened up my Core Skills.

  Lunar Scale Dust

  LV 0/3

  1/1

  Rain Raven:

  HP: Green

  MP: Green

  EP: Green

  Notes:

  Oh, oh, that was very good; it seemed that I could control the beings hit by my wing dust. Well, maybe, and the number below it was probably the number of things I could enslave. No, enslave sounds icky, I'm going to say control.

  To confirm my hypothesis, I mentally commanded it, and nothing happened, then I felt my Bug instincts paw at the door I had locked it behind.

  No, you don’t get to go out yet after what you did! Then I thought it over for a moment, ok, since you weren’t suicidal, I’ll let you out for a moment, but just to do this, ok!

  I let the bug take over and release a pheromone that felt draining to use for some reason, then I gave it a command to hop around. And it did, stiffly, and in just one direction. I commanded it to go around in circles, and it did.

  Then I felt a drain, like from when I used the weird pheromone, a suspicion pulled at me, so I pulled up my status.

  HP: Green

  Lv: 1

  MP: Light Yellow

  Lv: 6

  EP: Yellow (Days to live 7/7)

  Lv: 3

  And my suspicions were confirmed, it cost MP to use the skill Lunar Scale Dust, and maybe EP, but that was probably from flying around. Now that I thought about it, it was probably best to keep my EP as high as possible, considering it was connected to the “Days to live” thing.

  I spent the next few hours experimenting around with what I could do with the bird, and I discovered the more general the instructions, the more liberal with it the subject generally was. But if I made them specific, ‘like take ten hops forward then stop’, the more robotic, and usually worse it was.

  Which suggested a disturbing amount of will and intelligence remained while being my slave-subject, I mean subject. Though since this seemed to be my only form of offense, I opted to keep my subject under my control so I could level up.

  Speaking of which, I crawled onto the back of the Rain Raven as it took flight, something I discovered when figuring out ways to conserve EP. And I ordered the Raven to look for things to fight it thought it could beat, so I could killsteal and get the XP.

  While I, its master, or as I liked to think, Benevolent Lord, did important stuff, what you may ask?.. Well, that’s none of your business, ok! And as we flew, I observed something I had only vaguely noticed myself, the Biome wasn’t consistent. It constantly changed, from tropical to temperate, to desert, in patches varying from miles to yards, with no rhyme or reason.

  But then the Raven indicated it had found something to fight, I jumped off and flew beside it, looking at what it found. Ants, a small party of them on top of a tree, cutting pieces of leaves off, I deemed the Raven correct and gave the go ahead.

  It dived and the Raven picked one of the ants up, which was a lot bigger than I thought when it got up to me, about twice my size. It was still wriggling around, so I had Raven crush it a little, stomaching my revulsion at its ugly face. I took its head in my little legs and pulled its head off with all my might.

  It released with a wet pop and a weird smell. I dropped the head, I didn’t get a level up, so I ordered the Rain Raven to do it again. But when it reached the ants, they’d gathered up when I wasn’t looking, and grabbed the Raven in their mandibles.

  No, damn it, Raven has the danger pheromone for the ants all over it, that’s what that weird smell was.

  I flew down to try and help the Rain Raven for some stupid, demented reason, and I got caught by the giant ants as well. I ordered Raven to protect me, but it couldn’t do much; it let out a caw and released a blade of water through the air, cutting through the ants.

  I suppose that’s what the Rain part of Rain Raven meant, but it didn’t help much as more ants flooded in, to replace the dead ones.

  They quickly killed off the Raven, deciding it was a threat and not the random bug they caught. But it gave me enough space to spread my wings and sprinkle the ants holding me with Lunar Scale Dust.

  Enslaving one of them, I had it let go of me and run off in a random direction, having it scream danger with its Pheromones. The remaining Ants holding me let go and followed the screaming Ant. Allowing for my escape, and as I ran, I heard a ding from the system.

  “Level up, +1 to Evolution Level, gain 2 mutation points.”

  “Level up, +1 to Lunar Scale Dust Level.”